2013TaylorHLPhD - Royal Holloway

Adrian Henri and the Merseybeat movement:
performance, poetry, and public in the Liverpool scene of the 1960s
Helen Louise Taylor
Royal Holloway, University of London
A thesis presented for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, 2013
1
For, and because of, my parents.
2
DECLARATION OF AUTHORSHIP
I, Helen Louise Taylor, hereby declare that this thesis and the work presented in it is entirely
my own. Where I have consulted the work of others, this is always clearly stated.
Signed: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Date: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
3
THESIS ABSTRACT
Adrian Henri and the Merseybeat movement: performance, poetry, and public in the
Liverpool scene of the 1960s
The thesis focuses on the Merseybeat movement and its manifestations in Liverpool in the
1960s, with particular emphasis on the work of Adrian Henri. The Merseybeat movement –
centred upon Adrian Henri, Roger McGough, and Brian Patten – was a site-specific
confluence of the alternative avant-garde and the British populist tradition of art, and
deserves exploration as both a literary and a cultural phenomenon. The thesis argues that the
dismissal of Merseybeat as ‘pop poetry’ has come from using the wrong critical tools: it is
better viewed as a ‘total art’ movement, encompassing not only poetry but also visual art,
music, comedy, happenings, and other forms of artistic expression.
The thesis is primarily concerned with the performative and collaborative aspects of
Merseybeat. As well as considering this particular movement in terms of oral performance
and audience communication, this research also contributes to our understanding of the
dissemination of this poetry – particularly how its audiences experienced live poetry
alongside other artforms and media. I have used the term ‘crossmedia’ to refer to the way in
which a piece can blend media and to explore how a piece can be performed in different
ways to suit different occasions, appropriating elements from various artforms to create a
unique performance instance.
The thesis has been divided into five chapters in order to consider, first, the movement’s
origins (in the city of Liverpool) and suggested antecedents (in the American Beat scene),
and second, its three most important facets: live readings, performances with music, and
visual art practices. The work draws on literary geography, performance studies, and visual
art theories, and I have also undertaken much new archival research and interviews with
both performers and audience members in order to present a ‘thick description’ of not only
the events but also the context in which they arose.
4
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Acknowledgements
6
List of Abbreviations
7
Introduction: performance, poetry, and public
8
The origins of Merseybeat / The critical reception / The thesis
Chapter One: Liverpool
21
The River and the City / The Port Itself / The Cunard Yanks /
Liverpool 8 / Diasporic Liverpudlians / Walking the City /
Conclusion
Chapter Two: Ginsberg and Liverpool
60
Liverpool as the Centre of Human Consciousness / Ginsberg and
Mrs. Albion / Ginsberg’s Poetic Influence / Conclusion
Chapter Three: Verbal Expression and the Live Event
96
Audience and Atmosphere / Audience and the Unique Event /
Location and Locality / Authorial Presence and Control /
Collaboration in Performance / Verbal Play / Conclusion
Chapter Four: Music in Merseybeat
135
Music in Merseybeat / Music for McGough, the Scaffold, Grimms,
and Patten / Music for Henri / Adrian Henri’s Talking Blues /
Setting Bat-Poems to Music / Music and Evocation / The Entry of
Christ Into Liverpool (Part One of Two) / Conclusion
Chapter Five: Visual Art Practice
174
I Want To Paint / The Entry of Christ Into Liverpool (Part Two of
Two) / Visual Quotations of the Everyday / Visual Poetry / Visual
Art Practice in Performance / Events and Happenings / Conclusion
Conclusion
216
Appendix
222
Bibliography
265
5
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I should like to thank all who agreed to be interviewed for this thesis: Roger McGough,
Brian Patten, Mike McCartney, Mike Evans, Heather Holden, and Geoff Ward. Special
thanks are due to Catherine Marcangeli for her support, advice, and enthusiasm for the
project. I am also grateful to Andy Roberts, for the time he gave discussing the music of the
Merseybeat movement and his experiences in Liverpool.
There are two groups of people in Liverpool who deserve particular thanks: Dr. Maureen
Watry and her staff at the Liverpool University Special Collections and Archives (especially
the original cataloguer, Jo Klett) for all of their help over the years; and all those who spoke
to me of their memories, especially Arthur Alden for organising interviewees.
Many of the ideas in this thesis have been presented at conferences over the last three years,
and I am grateful to the conference organisers for those chances to speak and the feedback
which was given at each event. Elements of Chapter Four have appeared in print as
‘“Reelin’ an’ a-rockin’”: Adrian Henri and 1960s Pop’, in the East-West Cultural Passage
journal (12.1, 2012).
***
I should like to express my gratitude to my supervisor, Professor Robert Hampson, whose
guidance has been invaluable throughout. Without his initial interest and continued support
this project would not have been possible.
Thanks, too, to Dr. Will Montgomery and Professor Chris Townsend for their input.
And finally, thanks are due to my wonderful family and friends for their aid and
encouragement.
6
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
TLS
Edward Lucie-Smith, ed., The Liverpool Scene (London: Rapp &
Carroll, 1967)
TMS1
Adrian Henri, Roger McGough, and Brian Patten, Penguin
Modern Poets 10: The Mersey Sound (Harmondsworth: Penguin,
1967)
TMS2
Adrian Henri, Roger McGough, and Brian Patten, Penguin
Modern Poets 10: The Mersey Sound Revised and Enlarged
Edition (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1974)
TMS3
Adrian Henri, Roger McGough, and Brian Patten, The Mersey
Sound Revised Edition (Harmondsworth: Penguin,1983)
TMS4
Adrian Henri, Roger McGough, and Brian Patten, The Mersey
Sound Revised Edition, Penguin Modern Classics edition
(Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2007)
A
Adrian Henri, Autobiography (London: Jonathan Cape, 1971)
C
Adrian Henri, City (London: Rapp and Whiting, 1969)
NFA
Adrian Henri, Not Fade Away: Poems 1989-1994 (Newcastle:
Bloodaxe, 1994)
PA
Selected
Adrian Henri, Penny Arcade (London: Jonathan Cape, 1983)
Adrian Henri, Selected and Unpublished Poems 1965-2000, ed.
by Catherine Marcangeli (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press,
2007)
TAN
Adrian Henri, Tonight at Noon (London: Rapp & Whiting, 1968)
MCP
Roger McGough, Collected Poems (London: Penguin, 2004)
PSP
Brian Patten, Selected Poems (London: Penguin, 2007)
7
Adrian Henri’s notebook list of ‘things that have influenced me’
From Adrian Henri Archive, University of Liverpool Special Archives and Collections,
Henri C 1/8.
INTRODUCTION: PERFORMANCE, POETRY, AND PUBLIC
Adrian Henri: ‘painter-poet’;1 ‘poet/writer/singer/painter’;2 ‘poet, painter & performer’;3
‘notebook poet’;4 ‘poet, writer, painter, event-maker, arts organizer and catalyst’.5 These
various labels attached to Henri, which come from a number of different sources, show the
diversity of his practice. Henri’s notebook page, reproduced on the facing page, headed
‘things which have influenced me’ (Henri C 1/8), shows the same diversity in the
inspirations for his practice. Henri described himself in the 1960s as a ‘painter/poet’ (TAN,
77), and also as someone ‘concerned with communication’, ‘trying to remove the barriers
between performer and audience wherever possible’.6 He was, along with Roger McGough
and Brian Patten, ‘three thirds of a little red book back in 1967’.7 The book was Penguin
Modern Poets 10: The Mersey Sound, which disseminated the work of these poets to a
national audience. But before 1967, from the very beginning of the decade, these poets were
active in Liverpool. This thesis seeks to demonstrate the ways in which Henri and the
Merseybeat poets did indeed remove traditional barriers – fostering direct connections with
the audience, utilising various media, and placing importance on the live event as a mode of
dissemination. It also explores the context from which that 1967 collection emerged.
This movement is named here as Merseybeat to highlight the two most important sources
and inspirations for these poets in this decade: the city of Liverpool, represented by
‘Mersey’, and the American ‘Beat’ poetry scene. I am using the term ‘Merseybeat’ in the
full knowledge of the ‘Mersey Beat’ or ‘Mersey Sound’ music scene, in part because it
demonstrates the links between these different artforms – they not only share a name but
also a place and a time – but also because I believe it is the most accurate signifier for this
movement. There have been and will be other ‘Liverpool Poets’, but the naming of volume
ten of the Penguin Modern Poets series as The Mersey Sound was significant. None of the
other books in this series had a generic title. Memos preserved in the Penguin Archive show
the thought process: ‘we really do want to give this individual title a lift and a chance of
1
George Melly, Revolt into Style: The Pop Arts in the 50s and 60s (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1989), p. 131-2.
2
Mike Davies, ed., Conversations (Birmingham: Flat Earth Press, 1975), p. 1.
3
Words on the Run publicity material, McGough/7/18. References to the Liverpool University
Special Collections and Archives (for Henri I and II, McGough, and Patten) appear in this format
throughout.
For
finding
aids
and
short
catalogue
descriptions,
see
http://sca.lib.liv.ac.uk/collections/colldescs/henri.html [accessed 20 May 2013].
4
Interview with Catherine Marcangeli, May 2012.
5
Archive clipping, Henri K/6, review of Environments and Happenings from British Book News,
October 1974.
6
Adrian Henri, in The Art of Adrian Henri, 1955-1985, ed. by Josie Henderson (London: Expression
Printers, 1986), p. 45. Article originally published in Sphinx, autumn 1964.
7
The Wellingborough Bootleg Audio Cassette, Patten/9/1/14.
8
selling better than other volumes in the series’.8 The commercial possibilities are also
recognised in the original cover brief. The ‘analysis’ section takes a particular marketing
angle, referring to the ‘three “Pop” poets from Liverpool’, with the ‘treatment’ requiring:
‘something very different from present PMP style. Something alive and rowdy and pop.’9
Whether the title and cover design helped or not, this volume sold forty thousand copies in
the first year, being reprinted eight times in seven years, with the ‘revised and enlarged’
edition appearing in 1974, and another ‘revised edition’ alongside New Volume in 1983, not
to mention the rebranding of the volume as a Penguin Modern Classic in 2007.10 1967 also
saw the publication of Edward Lucie-Smith’s anthology The Liverpool Scene, and, later that
same year, The Incredible New Liverpool Scene LP, produced by Hal Shaper. The LP was
recorded in 1967 at a session organised after the London launch of The Liverpool Scene at
the Institute for Contemporary Arts. Shaper describes his motive on the back cover of the
LP: after watching ‘the Liverpool Poets’ on Look of the Week in March 1967, he ‘recorded
Adrian Henri, Roger McGough and Andy Roberts simply because they had something to say
that had meaning for me.’11 Shaper’s text emphasises a shared background and the
importance of communication between poet and audience – it is because they ‘had meaning
for me’ that he became interested in the group. The LP was directly inspired by LucieSmith’s book, via the BBC programme, copying its cover art. Shaper’s back cover also
states that: ‘This album is deeply personal to Liverpool but even more personal to the three
young men who have set their city down and recorded it in its own language.’ 12
Interestingly, the three men here are Henri, McGough, and Roberts – not Henri, McGough,
and Patten, the three chosen for the Penguin Modern Poets series.13 As well as these
collective works, there were also solo collections by all three in that same year. And, of
course, the following decades would see all three poets produce collections of adult and
children’s poetry and other literary works, as well as taking part in countless readings, tours,
and media appearances.
8
Internal Memo, ‘GF to AR’, 4 November 1966 (Penguin Archive at Bristol University, DM 1107/ D
103).
9
Cover Brief, 3 October 1966 (Penguin Archive at Bristol University, DM 1107/ D 103).
10
Booth specifically cites Penguin Modern Poets 10 as an example of a high-selling volume, pointing
out that ‘reprinting for Penguin does not mean an extra few hundred copies’, so popularity of the
volume was significantly high (Martin Booth, British Poetry 1964 to 1984: Driving through the
barricades [London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1985], pp. 11-2, 64). It remains the best-selling
poetry anthology of all time.
11
Hal Shaper, back cover of The Incredible New Liverpool Scene LP, prod. by Hal Shaper (CBS,
63045, 1967).
12
Shaper, Scene LP.
13
The LP does not include other poets who were promoting The Liverpool Scene: Andy Roberts
recalls Spike Hawkins and Pete Brown being present for the BBC event, but not Brian Patten
(Interview with Andy Roberts, June 2012). Whilst this thesis focuses on Henri, with McGough and
Patten, the Merseybeat movement included many others.
9
THE ORIGINS OF MERSEYBEAT
The Merseybeat movement began in the early 1960s as a response to the poetry-and-jazz
movement brought to Liverpool by Pete Brown and Michael Horovitz. Anecdotal history
states that Patten’s first encounter with the poetry scene in Liverpool was the result of
reading an advert in the Liverpool Echo: ‘MEET PETE THE BEAT AT STREATE’S’.14
Patten was at the time fifteen, had just left school, and was working as a cub reporter.
McGough recalls:
Halfway through a reading one night in November 1961 Pete Brown told me there
was a journalist I should meet, a guy from the Bootle Times, so I went upstairs
expecting this hard-bitten forty year old who’d come along to write the usual
‘Beatnik Horror!’ piece, and instead met this hard-bitten fifteen year old who’d
come along to read his poems.15
The Merseybeat poets would soon distance themselves from the poetry-and-jazz scene,
looking for their own place to explore what live poetry in Liverpool should be. Horovitz has
said that Merseybeat ‘was more pop poetry, whereas we were more bop poetry.’ 16 This
distinction is important, as bop, or jazz, was felt by Patten to be ‘still exclusively university
and middle class’,17 whereas:
Our evenings had more humour and folk orientated music, plus sketches etc. I think
except for Christopher Logue’s Redbird EP none of us rated poetry and jazz – it
seemed a jarring mix. We were creating our own scene and I’ve a feeling it was
more down to earth.18
Horovitz and Brown had begun combining music with poetry by reading alongside jazz
bands in London around 1960. However, this was not seen by those within the Merseybeat
movement as a successful combination. For Andy Roberts (who would become the guitarist
for Henri’s band The Liverpool Scene, and one of his major collaborators), the notable error
in these events was that the jazz bands played their own music and the poets read their own
poems without any thought as to the links between the two.19 For Roberts, the music should
be ‘a carpet for the poem to walk on’, adding to it without intruding on the work.20 Likewise,
Henri said he was ‘never much of a fan of poetry-and-jazz – certainly not the Horovitz
14
Phil Bowen, A Gallery To Play To: The Story of the Mersey Poets (Exeter: Stride, 1999), p. 46.
Roger McGough, Said and Done: the autobiography (London: Random House, 2005), p. 150.
16
Michael Horovitz, in Jonathon Green, Days in the Life: Voices from the English Underground,
1961-1971 (London: Pimlico, 1998), p. 21.
17
Brian Patten, cited in Bowen, p. 48.
18
Interview with Brian Patten, June 2012. This is the same Logue recording that McGough mentions
in connection with Ginsberg, in Chapter Two.
19
Whilst this is not true of artists such as Pete Brown, whose work over many decades has linked
poetry and music (writing lyrics for the supergroup Cream and his own bands as well as consistently
performing his poetry), other groupings were less successful.
20
Interview with Andy Roberts, June 2012.
15
10
brand, it just didn’t seem to gel.’21 The poetry-and-jazz nights in Streate’s were soon rejected
by the Merseybeat poets in favour of their own nights: Patten’s statement above that their
scene was ‘folk’ and ‘down to earth’ (as well as ‘our’) is key to this rejection of jazz.
Horovitz’s labelling uses ‘pop’ to mean something inferior, rather than ‘the popular’ (as in
‘of the people’), which was central to this movement.
When Brown claims, in his autobiography, that ‘it was really Spike [Hawkins] who started
the whole Liverpool poetry scene, and he had never received the credit for it’,22 what he is
referring to is these poetry-and-jazz nights, brought in by poets from outside of the city. The
London-centric poets who ‘started’ the scene were all interviewed for Jonathan Green’s
Days In The Life, and their attitudes are jarring. Green’s collection of interviews recounts a
meeting at the Beaulieu Jazz Festival where Byrne, Hawkins, Horovitz, and Brown decided
to ‘split the country’, as Johnny Byrne recalls:
Hawkins and Byrne would have everything north of Stafford, and Horovitz and
Brown would have everything south. And we would set up these readings. So
Hawkins and I went straight back to Liverpool to set up the first of these readings at
a place called Streate’s Coffee Bar.23
Horovitz also describes Brown and himself taking ‘a troupe of musicians to Liverpool’, and
remembers that they ‘did the first jazz-poetry in the north at the Crane Theatre in Liverpool
and at the Manchester ICA’.24 His recollection is of Henri, host of the after-party, saying ‘Oh
this poetry stuff is all right, I think I’m gonna start doing it’, and although he does concede
that McGough ‘had read with us in Edinburgh’ before this, his attitude towards the native
talent in the city is condescending: it is difficult to imagine Patten sitting in the front row
‘trying to hide his school cap’ as Horovitz suggests, as he had in fact left school by this time
for his job on the Bootle Times – it is also unlikely that Patten would have worn a school cap
at Sefton Park Secondary Modern School.25
Byrne did indeed start the first weekly poetry readings at Streate’s with Hawkins. He relates
that:
The first poetry readings we had were a couple of local jazz musicians, and us
mainly reading from poems in the Evergreen Review. We made trips to Better Books
21
Adrian Henri, cited in Bowen, p. 47.
Pete Brown, White Rooms and Imaginary Westerns: on the road with Ginsberg, Clapton, and
Cream, (London: JR Books, 2010), p. 47.
23
Johnny Byrne, in Green, p. 20. This sounds more like gangland bosses agreeing on territory than
poets.
24
Michael Horovitz, in Green, p. 20
25
Michael Horovitz, in Green, p. 20-1. See also Brown, pp. 47-53, on the start of the Liverpool scene
in 1960 and readings at the Edinburgh Festival of 1961.
22
11
in London to get it. The following year, which was about ’62, it was decided that we
would extend our activities further because Brown and Horovitz had come up to
Liverpool and there was the beginning of a community.26
It is this idea of the literary community being brought in from the outside that I disagree
with. But whilst Byrne does include ‘local’ jazz musicians, his admission of reading from
Evergreen Review and even more specifically that they brought the material in from a
bookshop in London, as well as the idea that these poets ‘decided’ to ‘extend’ their
activities, gives this history a sense of cultural imposition on Liverpool. This is exactly the
sort of literary endeavour that McGough reacts against:
Other poets in these clubs were writing about American landscapes. Although they’d
never been there it seemed OK to write a poem in beatnik jargon about getting into a
yellow cab and going down 43rd Street. 27
It is almost certainly this grouping that Anselm Hollo refers to in his introduction to the
Pocket Poets 1963 Jazz Poets anthology, when he says that ‘even Liverpool’ responded to
‘word of the so-called Poetry and Jazz Revival in the United States’.28 His introduction
describes ‘readings with jazz, or readings combined with jazz concerts’,29 implying the kind
of event that Roberts describes above, where poets and musicians present their own,
separate, works. The American-influenced poems which McGough remembers have not
survived, which either indicates that they have not stood the test of time as the Merseybeat
poets’ works have done, or that what he actually recalls is Byrne and others reading the
words of American poets in Evergreen Review, widely cited as a source of Beat poetry for
both the Liverpool and London-based poets discussed here. Perhaps Henri did make that offhand comment which Horovitz remembers, but, in contrast to Horovitz, whose ‘analogy was
with bop’ and ‘related to the beat poets’,30 the Merseybeat poets:
didn’t do it like the Americans did it, you did it like you would do it; so you didn’t
pretend you were coming from San Francisco or New Jersey, when you actually
came from Birkenhead or Bootle. So you did it with your own voice, not theirs. And
that was the great breakthrough.31
The reaction against Streate’s was to do with inauthenticity, and emphasis was placed
instead on the local and the participatory. The poets began reading at Sampson & Barlow’s
on a Monday night:
26
Johnny Byrne, in Green, p. 20.
Roger McGough, cited in Bowen, p.48.
28
Anselm Hollo, ed., Jazz Poets (London: Vista Books, 1963), p. 7.
29
Hollo, p. 8.
30
Michael Horovitz, in Green, p. 20-1.
31
Adrian Henri, cited in Bowen, p. 47.
27
12
right from the start we’d hit on an ‘anyone-can-join-in’ set-up ... Some would read
poems, sing, or take part in sketches McGough and others had written. Many were
regular contributors, and we knew almost everyone there by name.32
These evenings had begun that ‘removal of barriers’ which was so important to Henri and
his work. This is a ‘total art’ movement, encompassing not only poetry but also visual art,
music, comedy, happenings, and all forms of artistic expression, and as such all must be
considered in order to fully understand the work of these poets.
THE CRITICAL RECEPTION
Despite – or perhaps because of – the mass appeal and popularity of the poets, critics have
often dismissed the movement.33 Yet even as he labels the Liverpool and Newcastle poets as
‘clowns, entertainers, mild satirists, with various degrees of public skill’, Anthony Thwaite
(writing in 1978) does admit ‘one positive credit’ to the ‘pop’ movement:
it did help to create an audience, which for a time seemed unusually large, prepared
to listen to poetry as an activity as normal and enjoyable as listening to music. Since
about the mid-1960s very many poets have benefited from this, and not only ones of
a ‘pop’ persuasion.34
The idea that poetry might be something to be used and enjoyed in a communal manner is
the issue. Thwaite says that ‘live performance is the essence of what they do’,35 and he is
right, if one considers that the ‘live’ in live performance means that an audience is present to
be communicated with. To be labelled as an ‘entertainer’ should be a positive description –
and was, indeed, one which the Merseybeat poets reclaimed for themselves.36 And Thwaite’s
assertion that the poets (grouping Henri, Patten, and McGough together with Tom Pickard
and Barry MacSweeney) were not successful at this is undermined by his own admission of
their having created an ‘unusually large’ audience. Other critics have also picked up on the
importance of live performance. For example, Grevel Lindop, whose essay in British Poetry
since 1960 centres on the Liverpool poets, cites the reasons for their success as having: ‘their
32
Adrian Henri, ‘Pub Poet’, Punch, 15 October 1986, p. 12.
Some reactions are based on a London-centric view which is harmed by a lack of knowledge of the
loco-specificity of the movement. For example, in his British Poetry 1964 to 1984, Booth states twice
that the Liverpool poets appeared in 1967 (once in relation to Lucie-Smith’s anthology creating the
movement [Booth, p. 112] and once in relation to Henri’s poetry coming from The Liverpool Scene
[Booth, p. 139]), as well as claiming that they ‘came out of the cultural explosion ... spawned by the
Beatles’ (Booth, p. 133), due to the fact that national attention only appeared after they were
published, even though the scene had existed in Liverpool from the very early 1960s.
34
Anthony Thwaite, Twentieth Century English Poetry (London: Heinemann, 1978), p. 124.
35
Thwaite, p. 124.
36
In a number of interviews and press clippings preserved in the Archives Henri states his position on
this, such as: ‘“My readings are entertainment,” Adrian Henri told me. “After them you should feel as
if you have just been to a concert and the kind of audience I have always had is the sort who like good
pop music”’ (Archive clipping, Henri K/11, ‘Pop poet Adrian is so versatile’, n.d.).
33
13
own significance for an understanding of the relationship between poet and audience, a
matter to which most of the self-consciously “anti-establishment” poets attach great
importance.’37 However, Lindop ‘confesses’ that he has not heard Henri read, and that this
‘may conceivably have affected my estimate of his work’.38 This shows that even those
critics who have praise for the movement are still not fully aware of the aims.
The ‘pop’ tag which both fellow poets such as Horovitz and critics of this time often attach
to the poets could be taken to mean either ‘popular’, referring to its use of popular culture, or
‘populist’, in that it talks to the people. Whichever definition one takes, the result is much
the same: these poets used everyday language, imagery, and allusion, to talk to ordinary
people and engage them with poetry. Jonathan Raban’s critique of the poetry takes issue
with this, claiming that the poetry is ‘an attempt to get a local, private, dispossessed
language into verse, to talk straight, bypassing poetic convention, to the audience.’39 What I
am arguing is that the result is not, as Raban suggests, ‘whimsically impoverished speech’,40
but rather a deliberate utilisation of everyday speech and common cultural referencing to do
exactly what Raban criticises: to ‘talk straight’, to engage the audience, to foster a direct
connection. Raban believes that the Merseybeat movement uses literature:
as if no literary form had ever existed before; as if we had only voices in the street to
go on, and the cumulative experience of tradition amounted to merely a collection of
dusty files in the cellars of the academy.41
I disagree with Raban’s critique (of the Merseybeat poets, and also of Adrian Mitchell,
Michael McClure, Tom Pickard) in part because it is clear to me that they do not ignore
what has gone before them (this thesis explores the avant-garde, European, American, and
British sources for the movement) but also because, if they are using ‘only’ the ‘voices in the
street’, it is part of a deliberate act of communication. When Peter Barry refers to ‘patter and
poetry, chat and verse’,42 he is not dismissing the use of everyday registers but recognising
that these go hand in hand with the more literary references in order to create a bond with
the audience.
37
Grevel Lindop, ‘Poetry, Rhetoric and the Mass Audience: The Case of the Liverpool Poets’, in
British Poetry Since 1960: A Critical Survey, ed. by Grevel Lindop and Michael Schmidt (Oxford:
Carcanet, 1972), pp. 92-106, p. 93.
38
Lindop, in Lindop, p. 94.
39
Jonathan Raban, The Society of the Poem (London: Harrap, 1971), p. 116.
40
Raban, p. 116.
41
Raban, p. 133.
42
Peter Barry, Contemporary British poetry and the city (Manchester: Manchester University Press,
2000), p. 138.
14
Barry provides an in-depth analysis of Raban’s critique in his discussion of poetry in
Liverpool in Contemporary British Poetry and the City. Barry emphasises ‘a distinct
linguistic mobility’, the poets writing ‘across registers’ in a way which is ‘often more
culturally complex than Raban suggests.’43 In fact, Raban himself refers to Henri’s voice as
that ‘of a child who skips in his reading from Batman comics to the manifestos of European
surrealism and post-expressionism’,44 something which I see in a positive light.45
Furthermore, Barry recognises Henri as being:
closely tuned in to European and American artistic avant-gardism, looking back to
Dada and Surrealism, to Duchamp, to major modern artists like Jasper Johns and
Kurt Schwitters, and to contemporary ‘happenings’; to the activities of political
groups like the Situationists, and to conceptual art generally.46
Many of these will appear in this thesis as important sources for the work. The movement
combines, to use Barry’s phrase, ‘linguistically implied elements of cultural sophistication’47
with the everyday.
A survey of some of the major poetry anthologies of the last half century also demonstrates
how these poets have often been excluded from the mainstream British poetry tradition – for
example, neither The Penguin Book of Contemporary British Poetry (1982), edited by Blake
Morrison and Andrew Motion, nor The Oxford Book of Contemporary Verse (1980), edited
by D. J. Enright, includes these poets. Al Alvarez characterises the ‘pop movement in
poetry’ as ‘diluted near-verse designed for mass readings and poetry-and-jazz concerts.’48 He
also rejects their aim as being ‘not to innovate but to popularize, to seduce an audience
which is interested in poetry simply as an assertion of Bohemian non-conformity.’49 In his
1962 anthology The New Poetry, Alvarez cites cinema and television as forms of
mass/popular culture which are ‘usurping the power of high culture’, and which are,
therefore, behind that ‘diluted near-verse’.50 He sees the language of these visual arts as
being taken across into poetry. This language does indeed, as Alvarez states, function in a
different way to that of traditional print media. However, Alvarez then claims that: ‘the pop
43
Barry, p. 139.
Raban, p. 76.
45
Furthermore, Raban’s accusation that the poets depend on ‘public clichés’ (Raban, p. 116) is an
idea which I shall return to in Chapter Three, in a positive sense, as Henri in particular reclaims such
language.
46
Barry, p. 143.
47
Barry, p. 140.
48
Al Alvarez, ‘Modernism’, from Beyond All This Fiddle: Essays 1955-1967 (London: Penguin,
1968), p. 19-20.
49
Alvarez, ‘Modernism’, p. 19-20.
50
Al Alvarez, ‘On Pop Poetry’, in British Poetry Since 1945, ed. by Edward Lucie-Smith
(Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1970), p. 392-3.
44
15
poets do nothing more radical than model their verse on the lyrics of pop songs’.51 I agree
that popular forms of communication have been appropriated by these poets, but I disagree
as to the result. To utilise modern forms might indeed ‘seduce’ the audience, but this does
not make it a poor literary mode.
It must also be noted here that Horovitz, in line with his comments about ‘bop’ mentioned
above, did not include the Merseybeat poets in Children of Albion – neither the mainstream
nor the underground would anthologise them, it seems. Horovitz called McGough and Henri
‘out-spokenly pop artistes’, rejecting them from the selection for having been ‘marketed via
the guillotine channels of the pop industry’, and, by this association, comparing them
unfavourably to ‘the hard core of working “public” poets’.52 This is attacking not their work
(his comment on their role as ‘pop artistes’ adds that they are ‘very good ones’) but the
industry’s appropriation of them.53 In fact, Horovitz wrote to Henri with praise for his poem
‘Metropolis’ (to be printed in the New Departures double issue of 1975), and also,
significantly, recanting his earlier dismissal of the Merseybeat poets:
I’m cutting out the entire ‘Afterwords’ with silly put-down of you & McGough for
populism, on which I’m now with you all the way. Will probably write a brief new
Preface of humble pie on this & other scores.54
Other letters from Horovitz in the Henri Archive praise his work, such as realising ‘just how
MUCH beauty there is in yr writing. & real vision – I’d kind of taken it for granted, liking yr
paintings, that there’d be vision in yr poems too; now the strength of it’s come home to me’,
and referring to Henri’s ‘tremendous achievement’ in ‘combining the perfect professional
poem object & public noise & at the same time projecting such clarity of perception of
everyday & ultimate beauty’.55 This reappraisal is significant. I would argue that the
cynicism with which Alvarez and Horovitz view the audiences or marketing of the group
can be countered by the reports of those who experienced it firsthand. Arthur Adlen, who
grew up in Liverpool and saw these poets perform, told me that what the Merseybeat
movement showed him was that: ‘poetry could be about real life ... poetry in Liverpool to
me was about real life but expressed beautifully.’56 Thwaite’s comments, quoted above, on
the ‘unusually large’ audience for this kind of poetry is also telling: if this were only for a
time, if the audience members were simply using poetry as ‘an assertion of Bohemian non-
51
Alvarez, ‘On Pop Poetry’, p. 392-3.
Michael Horovitz, ‘Afterwords’, in Children of Albion: the poetry of the Underground in Britain,
ed. by Michael Horovitz (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1969), p. 328.
53
Michael Horovitz, ‘Afterwords’, p. 328.
54
Letter from Michael Horovitz to Adrian Henri, n.d., Henri M/3/18/2(a).
55
Letter from Michael Horovitz to Adrian Henri, n.d., Henri M/3/18/2(c).
56
Interview with Arthur Adlen, January 2011.
52
16
conformity’, then surely we would not still see the crowds McGough and Patten continue to
draw almost fifty years later. For Eric Mottram, writing about the British Poetry Revival, the
performances ‘showed that there could be an audience for poetry outside the study, the
university and the tradition-bound classroom.’57 Stephen Wade obviously believes that the
audience for this scene was significant enough to warrant questions such as: ‘How many
modern poets can say that they began their writing careers with a clear sense of audience and
a regular acquaintance with those same people within a local culture?’58 The fact remains
that Merseybeat poetry was one of the groupings of the 1960s which pushed for poetry to be
relevant, to be public, to be used.59
Peter Barry and Robert Hampson have noted ‘patterns of exclusion’ in mainstream
contemporary poetry anthologies, drawing attention to the ‘narrowness of poetic taste’ in
selections such as The Penguin Book of Contemporary British Poetry, and that one of the
areas particularly lacking in this anthology is the British Poetry Revival of the 1960s and
1970s, which was aided by small press and little magazine publications.60 In contrast, the
Merseybeat poets were published by Penguin as part of a major series. Edward Lucie-Smith
also included Henri, McGough, and Patten (as well as other poets who feature in The
Liverpool Scene, such as Henry Graham and Spike Hawkins) in the ‘New Voices’ section of
his British Poetry since 1945 (1970).61 The introduction sets out Lucie-Smith’s aims for the
anthology: ‘to present a clear, concise and coherent picture of what has been happening in
English poetry.’62 He states that the reason why some 1960s English poetry has escaped
critical recognition is due to the ‘decentralization of the poetic community’ and ‘the
tendency for poets to reject the academic world’; he rightly sees the ‘network of little
magazines and little presses’ as keeping ‘experimental writers in touch with one another all
over the world’, bypassing London as the creative centre.63 He goes on to observe the ‘return
57
Eric Mottram, ‘The British Poetry Revival, 1960-75’, in New British Poetries: The scope of the
possible, ed. by Peter Barry and Robert Hampson (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1993),
pp. 15-50, p. 26.
58
Stephen Wade, In My Own Shire: Region and Belonging in British Writing, 1840-1970 (Westport:
Praeger, 2002), p. 148.
59
Philip Larkin was Librarian at Hull and the warden of McGough’s Hall of Residence when
McGough was at Hull University. He wrote to McGough in 1980 that: ‘I was certainly impressed by
the condition of our copies of your books: they show signs of a good deal more wear and tear than
mine do. Congratulations!’ (Philip Larkin, cited in McGough, Said, p. 97).
60
See Peter Barry and Robert Hampson, ‘Introduction: The scope of the possible’, in Barry and
Hampson, pp. 1-11, pp. 4-7.
61
In order to place this ‘New Voices’ section in context, which also includes others such as Jeff
Nuttall and Tom Raworth, it is worth mentioning that the other sections either cover particular
movements, such as ‘The Group’ (including Lucie-Smith himself), or are labelled with descriptors,
such as ‘Dissenters’ – which is comprised solely of Christopher Logue and Adrian Mitchell.
62
Lucie-Smith, British Poetry, p. 27.
63
Lucie-Smith, British Poetry, p. 31.
17
of poetry to its prophetic role’ whilst discussing the ‘dissenting voice’ which accompanied
this decentralisation:
Poets suddenly found themselves the spokesmen of a real community – a
community which took its standards from the art schools rather than the universities,
which identified itself with a kind of political protest which rejected politics, with
the new music of the groups ... and which was eager, it seemed, for more wholly
radical attitudes than the poets themselves could provide.64
The emphasis on politics explains Adrian Mitchell’s inclusion in this section of the
anthology, but this dissent is also relevant for a description of the Liverpool poets, with the
importance of community to their scene. In the introduction to the ‘New Voices’ section,
Lucie-Smith, also an art critic, refers to the movement’s links with pop music but notes that,
‘on reflection’, he now sees ‘the commitment to modern art’ as being more important, as
‘the alliance between modern poets and modern painters has been of special significance to
modernism as a whole.’65 In this respect, his subsequent reference to Henri as the
‘theoretician’ of the group makes perfect sense: ‘a poet-painter who is trying to relate what
he writes to his experience of modern art’, referring the reader on to Henri’s ‘Notes on
Painting and Poetry’ in Tonight at Noon.66
THE THESIS
Whilst Henri, McGough, and Patten would go on to work in different fields, and have
distinct writing styles, what binds them together in the 1960s is an emphasis on live
performance, both for the expression of poetry and for a connection with the audience. The
thesis has been divided into the following five chapters in order to deal with, first, the
origins and antecedents of the movement, and second, its three most important facets or
manifestations. The thesis includes much original archival research and interviews with both
performers and audiences alongside the analysis of the works in an attempt to create a ‘thick
description’ of the movement.67 I argue that to look at only one facet of the movement – the
printed works – is to ignore much of what the poetry can do. It is only within the totalising
experience that the full impact of these works can be appreciated. I am using the term
64
Lucie-Smith, British Poetry, p. 31-2.
Lucie-Smith, British Poetry, p. 337-8.
66
Lucie-Smith, British Poetry, p. 348.
67
See Clifford Geertz, ‘Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture’, in The
Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays, 2nd. edn. (New York: Basic Books, 2000), pp. 3-30. A
‘thick description’ (originally proposed by Gilbert Ryle) is used in social anthropology to mean the
process of describing not only an aspect of human behaviour but also its context (and what might be
called ‘background information’). Geertz states that ‘man is an animal suspended in webs of
significance he himself has spun’, and a ‘thick description’ is one which considers ‘the stratified
hierarchy of meaningful structures’ around an act, ‘the sort of piled-up structures of inference and
implication through which an ethnographer is continually trying to pick his way’ (Geertz, pp. 5-7).
65
18
‘crossmedia’ to refer to both the way in which a piece can blend different media and the way
a piece can change and be performed in different ways to suit various occasions: where Dick
Higgins’s term ‘intermedia’ implies total fusion,68 ‘crossmedia’ works by appropriating
elements from different artforms to create a particular performance instance. A single work
can exist in various formations with links between each instance. So, Henri’s ‘The Entry of
Christ into Liverpool’ is a poem, a poster poem, a musical performance piece, and a
painting, with each artform informing and relating to the other creative instances but also
existing each in its own right. Each interpretation is a separate work but forms a
constellation of works across a range of media.
Communication is paramount. The poets achieve this in three main ways: performance,
music, and visual arts practice. Accordingly, the last three chapters examine the verbal,
vocal, and visual aspects of the movement’s work. I will also draw on a number of different
disciplines – sociology, literary geography, performance studies, and visual art – to discuss
this diverse body of work.
The first chapter looks at the city of Liverpool, and its role in the formation of the
Merseybeat movement but also as an inspiration for other people through its history as a
port, a hub, a crossroads. Henri was born in Birkenhead, but lived in the city (and, more
specifically, in the postcode area of Liverpool 8) all his adult life. Both McGough and Patten
moved away from the city after the 1960s, but it is always there, as a background to their
work. The role of Liverpool 8 – today’s Toxteth – is of primary importance to these poets,
the place in which they lived and worked in the decade I am focusing on. More than this, it
is emblematic of their social scene: place becomes space as their poetry claims the wider
area outside of the official postcode boundaries. Chapter Two considers the influence of the
American Beat movement on the Merseybeat poets. In seeking to re-evaluate Allen
Ginsberg’s visit to Liverpool in 1965, I argue that the links between the Americans and the
Liverpudlians is not as clear-cut as some would have it. What these poets took from
Ginsberg and the Beat movement was not a model to imitate but, as it were, permission to
continue what they were already practising before Ginsberg arrived: doing it in their own
voice, poetry of everyday experience, with an emphasis on live performance.
Live performance and the oral expression of poetry are the subjects of Chapter Three.
Through regular live readings in Liverpool in the early part of the decade, and also further
afield by the end of it, Henri, McGough, and Patten fostered connections with their audience
68
See Dick Higgins, Horizons: The Poetics and Theory of the Intermedia (Carbondale: Southern
Illinois University Press, 1984), pp. 15-6 and 24-5.
19
and utilised the energy and atmosphere produced to create a unique location for each
creative work: circumambient orality, the specifics of the milieu, and the fleeting nature of
spoken language all come together to create one instance of performance. It is in the sum of
these instances – those mentioned in this chapter and the next two – that the work is realised.
I consider collaboration as an essential part of the live event, and explore issues surrounding
control and authorship, informed by theories of orality and performance. Chapter Four
focuses on music, which is a different area of creative collaboration to that of the previous
chapter. All of the poets had involvement in more than one sphere of the arts, and this
chapter demonstrates the importance of different performative aspects of the movement to
show that Merseybeat poetry must be considered as more than the printed artefacts. In
Chapter Five, I look at the importance of visual arts: both visual culture surrounding the
movement and the importance of the look of the words on the page. Dada and Surrealism are
important influences here, particularly in relation to performance, alongside Pop Art and
Happenings, which Henri called ‘Events’. The aim of this thesis is to demonstrate how Henri
and the Merseybeat poets linked words, music, and the visual in order to present the
audience with a totalising experience.
20
CHAPTER ONE: LIVERPOOL
The creative life of the city is wide-ranging, from Gerald Manley Hopkins to Levi Tafari, via
the Pre-Raphaelite collection of the Walker Art Gallery and the Beatles’ Cavern. In the
1960s, one of the most important literary and cultural phenomena of the city emerged: the
poetry movement called Merseybeat. Liverpool is central to this movement and both the
external effects of this on, as well as the poets’ internal engagement with, the city need to be
recognised. Liverpool owes its economic life to the Mersey, and it is from the Mersey that
creative life flows into the city; it could not exist without it. Adrian Henri, Roger McGough,
and Brian Patten used Liverpool in their work over and over again to place themselves
within the city but also to claim it. The district with which the Merseybeat poets most often
identify is Liverpool 8. This is the postcode area east of the city centre, leading up from the
south docks, around the Anglican Cathedral, and, more importantly, the Art School. The
area has been known as Toxteth since the thirteenth century, but, as J. Hillis Miller tells us,
‘names are motivated’,1 and by using the name ‘Liverpool 8’ the poets claim their area.
‘Space’, for Michel de Certeau, ‘is a practiced place’,2 and this physical geographic place is
transformed by the poets into their social space by detailing their relationships with and
within the area as well as with the wider city, port, and river.
This chapter includes the work of Henri, McGough, and Patten alongside other writers in
order to provide a wider sense of the city in literature. The first half of this chapter will
consider experiences of both the docks and the city by a range of writers, of poetry and
prose, fiction and non-fiction. There have been countless visitors to the city over the
centuries, and by detailing and analysing some of their thoughts here I will show what
‘Liverpool’ has meant to them. The second half of this chapter will explore the specific
literary geography of this movement, utilising human geography and cultural studies
theories.3 I believe that discussion of the city itself is paramount to providing a background
to the movement, as Merseybeat was both externally affected by, and actively attempted to
have an effect on, the Liverpool landscape.
1
J. Hillis Miller, Topographies (Stanford: Standford University Press, 1995), p. 4.
Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, trans. by Steven Rendall (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1988), p. 117.
3
This is in line with my ‘thick description’ approach, as stated in the Introduction: ‘What Cultural
Geography teaches us is that if the world around us shapes our lives, we also make the world around
us over in ways that embody and embed our thoughts, imaginings, ideals, and meanings.’ (Michael
Ryan, Cultural Studies: A Practical Introduction [Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010], p. 12.)
2
21
THE RIVER AND THE CITY
Liverpool Poets 08 an anthology, edited by Alan Corkish (and published by his small press,
erbacce), was produced as a counterpoint to the official publications surrounding
Liverpool’s naming as the 2008 European Capital of Culture, and includes many poems by
local poets and residents. It understandably includes many poems about the Mersey, the
docks, and dock life, such as ‘The Mersey’ by John Blackall, which opens:
Let me tell you of the river.
It has the same rhythm as our being,
It seeps into our seething lives,
Once in a while catching our breath with its presence. 4
The most obvious way that the river ‘seeps’ into the lives of the citizens is by human
interaction. Due to fire regulations prohibiting sailors from sleeping on docked ships, in the
nineteenth century the area around the docks developed into a ‘Sailor’s Town’ to cater for
the large numbers of men requiring food, shelter, and entertainment whilst in port. Redburn,
the Herman Melville novel inspired by his own first voyage, describes stepping on shore to
be led to ‘a narrow lane, filled with boarding-houses, spirit-vaults, and sailors’ where he will
find a boarding-house and eat with his crewmates.5 In this way the sailors entered the life of
the town, but the natives also entered the life of the docks, working on the dock (classed as
casual labour), in bonded warehouses, or in clerical positions that the busy mercantile heart
required.
From Liverpool one could sail to almost anywhere in the world, and this is visually
represented for Melville by the ships themselves:
all the forests of the globe are represented, as in a grand parliament of masts. Canada
and New Zealand send their pines; America her live oak; India her teak; Norway her
spruce; and the Right Honourable Mahogant, member for Honduras and
Campeachy, is seen at his post by the wheel.
(Redburn, 234)
Writing of her travels only a few years after Melville, in 1854, Harriet Beecher Stowe
(author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin), uses the same trope to describe the bustling life of the port:
‘We are in a forest of ships of all nations; their masts bristling like the tall pines in Maine;
4
From Alan Corkish, ed., Liverpool Poets 08 an anthology (Liverpool: erbacce-press, 2008), p. 62.
Further references appear after quotations in the text as ‘LP’.
5
Herman Melville, Redburn (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1986), p. 194. Further references appear after
quotations in the text as ‘Redburn’. For a discussion of the autobiographical nature of Redburn, see
William H. Gilman’s survey Melville’s Early Life and ‘Redburn’ (New York: New York University
Press, 1951).
22
their many-coloured flags streaming like the forest leaves in autumn’.6 Later writers have
also used this idea. In Seaport, his long poem charting the rise and fall of the port’s fortunes,
Robert Hampson recalls this image to describe the port during the heyday of sail:
the high-masted ships
penetrate the city
masts mix with the city skyline
the terraced houses & churches 7
Grevel Lindop also uses this trope for the docks and churches in ‘Games of Chance’, where
there are ‘cranes, shipping, churchspires poking from the ribbed/ ploughland of terracehousing’.8 The organic ‘forest’ analogies of the previous century have been displaced, for
twentieth century writers, with an emphasis on the intrusive – the spires poke, the masts
penetrate. What is also important here, however, is the idea that the ships mix with the city,
evoking the strong links between the docklands and the rest of the city. However, during the
childhoods of the Merseybeat poets and their contemporaries (the post-war boom before the
economic decline of the latter half of the twentieth century) access to the dockside would not
have been as easy as for earlier visitors. Hampson tell us, in ‘docks (2)’, the cause of this
separation:
Hartley
pushes the docks
north & south along the coast
Brunswick Dock (1832)
Clarence Dock
etc.
a seven-mile line of docks
cuts the city off from the river
cuts masts & funnels out
of the daily life of the town
(Seaport, 22)
The first line, with ‘Hartley’ separated from the main body of the poem by surrounding the
word with the white space of the page, represents the division his schemes created.
Appointed Dock Engineer in 1824, Jesse Hartley’s ‘greatest monument’, according to
Quentin Hughes, is the Albert Dock enclosed warehouse.9 He also built the immense dock
6
Harriet Beecher Stowe, in Mersey Minis Volume 1: Landing, ed. by Deborah Mulhearn (Liverpool:
Capsica, 2007), p. 10. Further references appear in the text as ‘MM1’.
7
Robert Hampson, Seaport (Exeter: Shearsman Books, 2008), p. 21. Further references appear after
quotations in the text as ‘Seaport’.
8
From Peter Robinson, ed., Liverpool Accents: Seven Poets and a City (Liverpool: Liverpool
University Press, 1996), p. 70. Further references appear after quotations in the text as ‘LA’.
9
See Quentin Hughes, Seaport: Architecture and Townscape in Liverpool (London: Lund Humphries,
1964), p. 17: ‘The great merit of this system, where warehouses line the four sides of an enclosed
dock, rising vertically from the dock walls, is that goods can be unloaded directly from the ships into
the warehouses, lessening the risk of damage through repetitious handling and the danger of pilfering
which in a seaport can assume gigantic proportions.’
23
wall which ‘splits the docks from the dock-road’ (Seaport, 22), separating the port from the
city:
Some eighteen feet high and proportionally thick, they are pierced at intervals by
heavy wooden gates which slide with precision along iron guide rails deep into the
walls themselves. The gates when closed fit into slots cut in the stone surface of the
towers which stand like keeps guarding the portals of this nineteenth-century
stronghold. Having a sense of humour Hartley introduced a touch of whimsy in the
finish of these features; for false arrow slits, Tudor-arches, postern gates and deep
cut spirals on the stone spires underline the simile.10
Nevertheless, for the mid-twentieth century inhabitants, there was still a great awareness of
the river and the docks as a part of the city, seen from one of the ferries, the Pier Head
landing stage, or from the Overhead Railway. As Hughes observes, ‘one could at least peer
into the fortress from an elevated railway which ran the length of the docks from the Dingle
to Gladstone’, which ‘afforded a magnificent view of dockland’ until it closed at the end of
December 1956.11 Indeed, the company itself marketed the railway to tourists as ‘the best
way to see the finest docks in the world and the gigantic ocean liners’ (fig 1.1).
Adrian Henri’s first experiences of Liverpool would have been via the Pier Head landing
stage as he came ‘over the water’ from Birkenhead. ‘Mrs Albion You’ve Got a Lovely
Daughter’, discussed in the following chapter, anthropomorphises the city as ‘Albion’s most
lovely daughter’ who ‘sat on the banks of the Mersey dangling her landing stage in the
water’ (TMS1, 55). For Henri, the port appears early in his 1971 collection Autobiography,
where ‘Part One’ tells of his Birkenhead childhood:
looking out of the kitchen window
seeing the boats on the bright river
and the cranes from the dockyards
(A, 12)
Although the opening of Autobiography is set in Birkenhead, it is significant that the
opening lines look over to the city of Liverpool, making this the initial focus, as it would
become Henri’s home for the rest of his adult life. Thus, early in Autobiography, he recalls
trips on the ferry:
being taken over the river to see the big shops at Christmas
the road up the hill from the noisy dockyard
and the nasty smell from the tannery you didn’t like going past
(A, 11)
10
Hughes, Seaport, p. 37.
Hughes, Seaport, p. 39. See pages 64-5 for photos of the Overhead Railway itself, and page 30 for a
photo of the Aquitania viewed from one of the cars to give an idea of perspective and proximity.
11
24
The premodifying adjectives here heighten the senses – the shops are ‘big’ (both to him as a
child and also literally as they are the department stores of the city centre), and the
docklands area is not only ‘noisy’, but has also impressed on his olfactory memory. This sets
the tone for Henri’s use of the city in his work, as he never mentions a specific place without
giving it an emotional or personal aspect. Henri’s recollection of childhood gives the reader
a very different kind of poem to Hampson’s, which uses what Peter Barry terms
‘incorporated data’12 – literary sources and official material which are layered up throughout
Seaport to give an account of the city firmly placed within the wider sociohistorical context.
Everyday scenes, such as those included in ‘Part One’ of Autobiography, highlight the
importance of the port in the early lives of the Merseybeat poets, and can also be seen in the
writings of others involved in the wider scene. Mike McCartney’s autobiography opens with
a chapter entitled ‘The making of Liverpool’:
Along with the first George came the first dock ever built in England, and by the
1920’s there were eighty-seven docks covering six hundred acres, including the
Gladstone, the largest of its sort in Europe. Even as far back as 1905 Liverpool was
among the four greatest ports in the world. She also had the largest cathedral and
floating platform in Great Britain, and the largest warehouse in the world (not, I may
add, above the Cavern).13
As with Henri’s memory of ‘big shops’, within a few lines of prose, McCartney has used
‘largest’ three times, setting up the importance of the docks in his life, which are placed in
the book even before his account of his own childhood.
Poems about the docklands often make a connection to a specific person – such as Henri’s
‘Uncle Bill’ who would ‘roll home once a week/ watched by the Birkenhead moon’ (NFA,
61), or Jamie McKendrick’s ‘Banana Boat’ where the porter Pat Cassidy is described as ‘an
old hulk/ moored to a sandbank on the river’ (LA, 94) – reminding the reader of their direct
personal or familial connection with this place. Brian Patten associates the maritime past of
his city with his grandmother in ‘Tattoos’: ‘On her biceps/ The sails on the three-decked
galleon’ (PSP, 160). Sail power had been obsolete for over a century before Patten’s
childhood, but he elaborates on the subject of his grandmother with specifically maritime
vocabulary:
Ageing, the colours faded,
And her world shrank to a small island in the brain,
12
Peter Barry, Contemporary British Poetry and the City (Manchester: Manchester University Press,
2000), p. 159.
13
Mike McCartney, Thank U Very Much: Mike McCartney’s Family Album (London: Arthur Baker,
1981), p. 1.
25
A tumour on which memory was shipwrecked
Till finally that galleon came to rest
One fathom down beneath Liverpool clay,
Its sails deflated, the blue-bird mute,
The rose gone to seed.
(PSP, 160)
‘Making Arrangements’, from Matt Simpson’s collection of the same name, recognises the
pull of the docks, and the family’s involvement in them, more explicitly:
Look at the map. The streets where I grew up
move in a direction hard to resist,
lines of force that drag down to grey docks,
to where my father spent his strength. 14
Similarly, Lindop’s introduction to his selection of poems in Liverpool Accents tells of the
effect of living in a house overlooking the Garston Docks: ‘having that window, literally,
onto the river and the sounds of shipping by day and night, gave me a sense of being up
close to the city’s reason for being: the river itself’ (LA, 90). The poem also refers to ‘that
hush, the slow decline of trade’ (LA, 96), the aural opposite of the ‘bustle’ commented on by
earlier visitors.15 An early poem by McKendrick, entitled ‘The Sound of Things’ references
other noises:
dead dog lobbed from the posh promenade,
the pampered butt of peremptory commands
in one of those wide-windowed residences
...
did the dog guard the adjacent docks,
his ear adjusted to foghorn and crane,
his bark answering the watchman’s known tread
(LA, 96)
McGough felt that these dockyard noises were so much a part of his childhood that he
actually chose the sound of Liverpool tugs as one of his Desert Island Discs.16
THE PORT ITSELF
Liverpool was not only a port city, but an important one; not only an important one, but a
pioneering one. This was initially due to King John, whose charter of 1207 conferred upon
the people a freedom which was to be the making of the town:
14
Matt Simpson, Making Arrangements (Newcastle: Bloodaxe, 1982), p. 50.
See fig 1.2 for a chart of the independent reoccurrence of certain words and phrases in public and
private writings about Liverpool and her port.
16
Desert Island Discs: Castaway Roger McGough, broadcast 10 April 1994, BBC Radio 4 (see
www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/features/desert-island-discs/castaway/e16b4a6c [accessed 22 March 2011]).
15
26
Know ye that we have granted to all our loyal subjects who shall take burgages in
Liverpul that they shall have all the liberties and free customs in the township of
Liverpul which any free borough on the sea has in our land.17
Whilst this was a self-interested move, as John needed Lancastrian support to conquer
Ireland – Chester, which was already at this time a functioning trade port, was ‘too much
under the control of its powerful and independent earl’18 – the freedoms detailed in the
Letters Patent allowed Liverpool to become a hub of travel and commerce. At one time, the
city rivalled London as the most important city in the British Empire. As early as 1393
Liverpool was a ‘self-contained and self-governing community’,19 and John Leland’s
Itinerary of the 1530s reports that Irish merchants frequent the port because: ‘At Lyrpole is
smaul custome payed, that causith marchantes to resorte thither. Good marchandis at
Lyrpole’ (BS, 11). Fifty years later William Camden would write in his Britannia that
‘Litherpole, commonly called Lirpole’ was the ‘most convenient and most frequented
passage to Ireland’ (BS, 14). The importance of the port at this time is also clear from a
small reference in a play circa 1590, Fair Em, the Miller’s Daughter of Manchester, with the
Love of William the Conqueror, a Pleasant Comedie, which refers to ‘our King, who is that
daie landed at Lirpole’ (BS, 12) – Liverpool must have been well known as a port in order to
be referenced in this way.
Yet the real life of the port was still to come. Several acts of Parliament in the eighteenth
century can be used to chart the growth of the port: in 1709 for a wet dock, in 1738 to
improve the tidal basin, in 1785 to implement another wet dock for ships in open harbour,
and two further dock pleas in 1799. Perhaps the most important act was that of 1762, whose
preamble stated that:
The two wet docks and dry pier, already constructed, are not sufficient for the
reception of the ships resorting hereto; that vessels, especially His Majesty’s ships of
war, stationed at the port, are obliged to lie in the open harbour, exposed to the rage
of tempestuous weather and of rapid tides and currents in imminent danger of
shipwreck.20
It is surely clever of the Liverpool businessmen to make their plea in terms of national
security rather than their own desire to increase trade. Even before these new docks were
built, Daniel Defoe, on his Tour through the Whole Island of Great Britain, called Liverpool
17
Letters Patent, cited in Both Sides of the River: Merseyside in Poetry and Prose, ed. by Gladys
Mary Coles (West Kirby: Headland, 1993), p. 7. Further references appear after quotations in the text
as ‘BS’.
18
Ramsay Muir, A History of Liverpool (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1907), p. 16.
19
Muir, p. 40.
20
1762 Parliamentary Act, cited in Francis E. Hyde, Liverpool and the Mersey: An Economic History
of a Port 1700-1970 (Newton Abbot: David & Charles, 1971), p. 74.
27
‘one of the wonders of Britain’ (BS, 22). If the five Acts of Parliament over 100 years are
not enough to show the rapid growth of the town, Defoe also comments:
the town was, at my first visiting it, about the year 1680, a large, handsome, well
built and encreasing or thriving town; at my second visit, anno 1690, it was much
bigger than at my first seeing it, and, by the report of the inhabitants, more than
twice as big as it was twenty years before that.
(BS, 22)
Such increase shows the prosperity that the port’s trade was bringing to the town, but this is
still not the whole story. Not satisfied with ‘the first wet dock erected in the modern
world’,21 completed in 1715, specialisation of the docklands was occurring even before the
Industrial Revolution took hold; Ramsay Muir dates the first tobacco shipment as 1648, and,
whilst the first dedicated on-dock tobacco warehouse was not built until the 1790s, the first
sugar refinery was built in 1668, which in turn greatly encouraged businesses connected to
the sugar trade to trade in the town.22 Furthermore, the Lancashire climate was ideally suited
to spinning cotton, and Liverpool’s port was perfectly placed for trade with Ireland and
beyond – and with the advent of the Manchester & Liverpool Railway in 1830, convenience
of onward trading was added to the luck of geography. Nathaniel Hawthorne, American
Consul to the city 1853-57, had first-hand experience of the city’s ways of working from his
office ‘on the corner of Brunswick-street’, and describes the docks as: ‘the very busiest
bustle of commerce, rumbling wheels, hurrying men’.23 But whilst this era saw the port
thriving, a major part of this commerce came from a rather less innocent source.
The trade for which Liverpool is most famous – or perhaps infamous – is the transatlantic
slave trade, the so-called ‘triangular trade’ which saw ships leaving Liverpool laden with
cheap goods, trading these goods with African tribes for slaves, heading to America to trade
this human cargo for other goods, and then returning to Liverpool with West Indian and
American produce to be processed dockside and then sold on to the rest of the country.24
21
Muir, p. 176.
See Hyde, pp. 75-6, and Muir, pp. 138-9, on tobacco and sugar industries. Henry Tate’s sugar
empire began in Liverpool in 1869, merging with Abraham Lyle & Sons to become Tate & Lyle, and
expanding to London’s East End docklands. The Liverpool plant closed in 1981, and Tate Liverpool –
part of the gallery foundation named after the same Henry Tate – opened seven years later. An
industry which had provided jobs in the city for a century returned as part of the regeneration project
in the form of high culture.
23
Nathaniel Hawthorne, The English Notebooks 1853-1856, ed. by Thomas Woodson and Bill Ellis
(Ohio State University Press, 1997), p. 4. The US President Franklin Pierce made Hawthorne
American Consul to Liverpool in 1853, as a reward for writing his campaign biography, The Life of
Franklin Pierce.
24
This clearly very important topic is beyond the bounds of this thesis, but see, for example, Roger
Anstey and P. E. H. Hair, eds., Liverpool, the Africa Slave Trade and Abolition: Essays to Illustrate
Current Knowledge and Research, rev. edn. (Liverpool: Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire,
1989), and David Richardson, Suzanne Schwarz, and Anthony Tibbles, eds., Liverpool and
Transatlantic Slavery (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2007). Both collections of essays deal
22
28
This system allowed businessmen ‘a double crop of profits, and combined two distinct lines
of trade’.25 Liverpool also made use of its shipyards and graving docks to build such
purpose-built ships as the Mary Ellen, which the shipowner James Stonehouse remembers as
having ‘long shelves with ring-bolts in rows in several places’ in the hold: ‘I used to run
along these shelves, little thinking what dreadful scenes would be enacted upon them’ (BS,
33). This quotation appears in Both Sides of the River, edited by Gladys Mary Coles,
followed directly by a contemporary poem by Paul Cosgrove, ‘Iron’, which refers to the
Slavers as ‘Grotesque arrangements of man’s engineering’ (BS, 34). This editorial decision
emphasizes what the shipwrights’ craftsmanship was, in reality, being used for.
The pioneering businessmen of the nineteenth century were to develop the docklands even
further. Francis Hyde states that between 1811 and 1825 the dock water-space was
‘increased by approximately 80 per cent’,26 as they utilised the broad mouth of the Mersey
and the Pool from which the city takes its name. In fact, what is most significant about
Liverpool’s port is its development of the coastline’s geographic features. The Solent forms
a perfect natural harbour at Southampton, allowing huge ships to enter into the heart of the
dock and leave swiftly, whereas the Mersey’s tides have caused quite remarkable problems
over the years:
1748: the Queen Elizabeth takes 16 tides
to be floated into the Mersey
while the other traders queued
lay exposed in the Narrows
(Seaport, 21)
The Mersey mouth is not a perfect natural harbour, since it was plagued by tides, winds, and
shallows as ‘the NNW-SSE axis was to the beam of prevailing winds’,27 yet this was
conversely what also led to its place as an important port. The need to deepen and widen
access to the mouth over the years and to protect ships encouraged businessmen to develop a
vast dock space tailored to their changing needs, such as the specialisations mentioned
above. They built not only dockside warehouses but also important dockside maintenance
units wherever and whenever needed (wet, graving, and dry docks). The life of the town was
so caught up in the docklands that there was even a special supplement to the Liverpool
Daily Post for the opening of Gladstone Dock and official visit by King George V and
with various aspects of the trade, Liverpool’s involvement and domination of the market, and the
progress of abolition.
25
Muir, p. 194.
26
Hyde, p. 78.
27
Hyde, p. 124.
29
Queen Mary on 19th July 1927. The completed dock was ‘an enormous asset to the port’,28
for it allowed access to and service of the huge transatlantic liners which were at that time
becoming the norm.
Liverpool has long been host to a shifting population connected to the port – not just the
seamen but those casual workers such as Roger McGough’s own father, ‘a stevedore (Mum
preferred that to “docker”)/ And landlubbered all his married life’ (MCP, 14), and all the
trades which accumulate round the life of a port. Tony Lane’s two works on the city –
Gateway of Empire and City of the Sea – emphasise the cosmopolitan nature of this shifting
population by enumerating the nationalities found in Shipping Office logs:
the Chinese, the West Africans and handfuls of Yemenis, Filipinos, Malays,
Somalis, Indians and West Indians ... Swedes, Norwegians, Germans and Spaniards
... smaller numbers of French, Dutch, Belgians, Italians and North Americans.29
Similarly, The Autobiography of a Liverpool Irish Slummy by Pat O’Mara, born in 1901,
devotes Chapter Two to telling his readers of ‘Negroes, Chinese, Mulattoes, Filipinos,
almost every nationality under the sun, most of them boasting white wives and large halfcaste families’ who ‘were our neighbours, each colour laying claim to a certain street’.30 The
role of Lascar seamen – who ‘made excellent seamen’ (Redburn, 241) – on British ships has
been recorded as an important aspect of the cosmopolitan nature of many ports.31 Lane also
tells us that 40% of the seamen who signed on in Liverpool in 1891 were foreign nationals.32
Some sailors would have been residents, returning to Liverpool, others would have only
been stopping off on shore leave before continuing onwards. In fact, with the Sailors’ Home,
various boarding houses, and entertainment provision for this mutable population in the
streets emanating from the docklands, it is no surprise that Carl Gustav Jung interpreted the
name Liverpool to mean the ‘pool of life’ (BS, 160).
Arthur Adlen, a near contemporary of the Merseybeat poets who grew up near the docks,
says that ‘you’d hear not just different accents but different languages’,33 and in
‘Limestreetscene ’64’ McGough picks up on the resulting diversity of the inner city, where:
28
Ken Longbottom, Liverpool and the Mersey: Vol. 1 Gladstone Dock and the great liners
(Peterborough: Silver Link Publishing, 1995), p. 46.
29
Tony Lane, Liverpool: City of the Sea, rev. edn. (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1997), p.
87.
30
Pat O’Mara, The Autobiography of a Liverpool Slummy (Bath: Cedric Chivers, 1972), p. 11.
31
See, for example, Michael Herbert Fisher, ‘Working across the Seas: Indian Maritime Labourers in
India, Britain, and in between, 1600–1857’, International Review of Social History, 51(2006), 21–45,
and the website www.lascars.co.uk [accessed 22 March 2011].
32
Lane, City of the Sea, p. 87.
33
Interview with Arthur Adlen, January 2011.
30
Outside the Chinese cafes
like buddhas bouncers stand
lest a band
of teds or sailors
or drunken Viking whalers
should seek to violate the chow mein
and trample on the waterchestnuts
(TLS, 15)
McGough picks up on various social and cultural types for comic effect, linking
contemporary Teddy Boys and early Vikings explorers in the same breath to create an
extreme illustration of the cosmopolitan nature of the city.
The sheer quantity of trade – in terms of both goods and people – passing through Liverpool
throughout the nineteenth century comes through in contemporary reports: there are certain
words and phrases which appear over and over again. A chronological catalogue of my
findings can be found in the Appendix (fig 1.2), but a few examples are worth presenting
here to give an idea of the comments made by both visitors and natives. The report of
Zangara, a freed slave writing in 1849, speaks of ‘astonishment’ at the scale of the port, ‘The
immense buildings, and the perpetual bustle, almost bewildered my senses’.34 Two German
visitors also independently use this word: J. G. Kohl wrote in 1842 that ‘the noisy, bustling
scene became a source of amusement and pleasurable excitement’ (MM5, 57), and Julius
Rodenburg, ten years later, believed that ‘Nowhere can one get a better picture of the bustle
of a port than here’ (BS, 85). When Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote of her experiences in this
period she devotes much space to describing the ‘energy’ of various occupations, ending:
‘All is bustle, animation, exultation’ (MM1, 9-10, my italics throughout).
Beecher Stowe perfectly evokes the busy-ness of the nineteenth century port in her diary.
Long sections are quoted in the Mersey Minis series, in the volume titled Landing, full of
similar extracts from private letters and published works.35 The extract from which I quote
above is placed in Landing just after a piece from Paul Du Noyer, reproduced from his key
recent work on music in the city, Liverpool, Wondrous Place:
Down by the Pier Head, at the foot of the Liver Building, the city sips at a river the
colour of tea. At the landing stage the Mersey Ferry boats bob, tenderly crushing fat
tractor tyres slung from rusty chains. Evening will arrive any minute now and it will
34
From Mersey Minis Volume 5: Leaving, ed. by Deborah Mulhearn (Liverpool: Capsica, 2007), p.
90. Further references appear after quotations in the text as ‘MM5’.
35
The Mersey Minis series consists of five volumes (alliteratively divided into Landing, Living,
Longing, Loving, Leaving) and was published in 2007 to ‘celebrate Liverpool’s 800th anniversary’, as
the back cover blurb to Living tells us. The books reproduce quotations from and about Liverpool, and
are very much geared towards the Heritage Industry. This chapter quotes from both this series and
Coles’ Both Sides as anthologies which have given me access to a wide range of public and private
sources.
31
crown the whole scene with a huge tangerine sky. The cares of the day will be
carried out to sea on a six-knot ebb-tide. Already you can hear a pub juke-box kick
into life. Liverpool lights are coming on. And if the old are going home, the young
are just getting started. The music is growing louder, and the first girl’s shriek is
about to pierce the misty air. This is a party town, and nothing gets in its way.
(MM1, 8-9, my italics)
Du Noyer is writing after the economic decline of the port, when the industry so admired by
Beecher Stowe had disappeared all but completely. The word choices he makes (‘sips’,
‘bobs’, ‘tenderly’) emphasise the gentle nature of the river, while the calmness of this
landing stage contrasts with the bustle which Beecher Stowe highlights.36 This difference is
even more obvious in the latter half of the passage where the quiet port is contrasted with the
violence of the music scene, as in Du Noyer’s choice of verbs such as ‘kick’ and ‘pierce’.
The bell which in the 1800s was ‘always tolling’ has here been replaced by music, ‘growing
louder’.
By contrast, there are also plenty of reports of both locals and visitors enjoying the
docklands as a tourist attraction – in the nineteenth and early twentieth century it was the
actual business of a functioning port which drew sightseers, rather than the modern
incarnation, which has a Tate gallery and other attractions to draw crowds today. For
example, Sarah Alice Scott, from Chester, records in her 1875 diary that she ‘Went to
Liverpool to see the docks & shipping’, describing the ‘wonderful sight’ as ‘a regular forest
of ships’ masts’ (BS, 98).37 John P. Reid, from Liverpool, remembers that the ‘most exciting
of our Sunday airings were undoubtedly those to the Landing Stage’ (BS, 155), marking the
docks as an attraction in themselves. Another visitor, the Reverend Francis Kilvert, writing
in his diary for 20th June, 1872, similarly sees the Mersey as: ‘almost crowded’ with:
ships, barques, brigs, brigantines, schooners, cutters, colliers, tugs, steamboats,
lighters, ‘flats’, everything from the huge emigrant liner steamship with four masts
to the tiny sailing and rowing boat.
(BS, 96)
The sheer diversity of the ships is figured by the Czech writer Karel Čapek, in a 1924 letter
home:
there was something worth seeing … puffing steam ferries, tug-boats, like potbellied, black hogs rocking on the waves, white Atlantic liners, docks, basins,
towers, cranes, silos, elevators, smoking factories, stevedores, barks [barques],
warehouses, wharves, casks, packing-cases, tubs, bales, chimneys, masts, rigging,
trains, smoke, chaos, yelling, clanging, clattering, panting, rent bellies of ships,
smell of horses, of sweat, of foul water and garbage from all parts of the earth.
36
In fact, the word ‘tender’ itself perhaps suggests this tension, meaning gentle but also being a name
of a type of tugboat that tends to larger ships.
37
This forest trope is also mentioned on pages 22-3.
32
(MM1, 25)
Čapek’s letter goes on to say that ‘if I were to go on heaping up words for another half an
hour I should not prove a match for that sum-total of quantity, confusion and extent which is
called Liverpool’ (MM1, 25). This layering of words on the page is used to represent a sense
of the magnitude of the port and its ships. Such lists are also present in non-fiction works,
such as Hyde’s simple list of imports and exports,38 Lane’s extensive report on the uses of
these by the companies of the docklands,39 and Muir’s explanation of the ‘triangular trade’.40
The ancient poetic device of lists to describe crowding, crowded themselves, occur
frequently in writings about Liverpool, as in McGough’s ‘What does your father do?’:
In dreams, I hear him naming the docks he knew and loved.
A mantra of gentle reproach: Gladstone, Hornby, Alexandra,
Langton, Brocklebank, Canada, Huskisson, Sandon, Wellington,
Bramley Moor, Nelson, Salisbury, Trafalgar, Victoria.
(MCP, 16)
The ‘mantra’ of dock names is supplemented by a string of significant military terms.
Gladys Mary Coles’ ‘Liners’ works in much the same way, the alliterative ‘liners, Liverpool
leviathans’ with their ‘attendant tugs’ are straightforwardly listed, the names emphasised
visually by the use of italics again:
fleets of Cunard and White Star:
Carmania, Carpathia, Ascania,
Georgic, Britannic, Majestic.
Sea palaces, floating towns
with floating populations.
Graceful ocean greyhounds –
Mauretania, Media, Parthia,
Duchesses, white Empresses
of France, Scotland, Canada. 41
Lists of ships and produce clearly show the extent of the reach Liverpool had in its heyday. 42
Indeed, Hughes terms Liverpool ‘a world city’, looking out across the Atlantic as well as to
the Eastern routes and the Pacific via its trade links, ‘not parochial and introvert like the
Yorkshire towns.’43 Liverpudlians were used to exotic produce and souvenirs brought back
38
See Hyde, pp. 2-3.
See Tony Lane, Liverpool: Gateway of Empire (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1987), pp. 42-3.
40
See Muir, pp. 193-4.
41
Gladys Mary Coles, Liverpool Folio (London: Gerald Duckworth & Co., 1984), p. 21. The names
of Cunard Line vessels always ended in the suffix ‘ia’ or later ‘a’.
42
Lists are also important in Henri’s work, as shall be discussed in Chapter Five, p. 188-91.
43
Hughes, Seaport, p. x.
39
33
by sailors for their families long before the rest of the country would have been able to
afford them. Kevin Male remembers one such specific item:
I had a mate of mine whose dad went away to sea, and he was mostly on the far
eastern run, and he brought back a transistor radio. One day he came up with this
thing, and I said what’s that and he said it’s a radio, and I was looking round for the
plug, and I said if it’s a radio where do you plug it in? He said it runs on batteries! ...
It was like a caveman being shown fire! Must have been a year, two years, before I
saw them in the shops.44
John Cornelius also remembers that ‘lots of kids’ Dads were sailors’, the contracted seamen
who would return ‘like a conquering hero, laden with presents’: ‘Smelling-things for the
Mum, African masks, bamboo whistles that didn’t whistle, all packed into that long bag
slung over the shoulder.’45 But the quotidian cultural life of the city was also strongly
influenced by a particularly transatlantic phenomenon: one particular trade route is of more
interest to the creation of the Merseybeat movement than any other.
THE CUNARD YANKS
The Liverpool waterfront has been linked to America by its architecture: the Dock Board
Offices, the Cunard and Royal Liver Buildings are described by J. B. Priestley ‘as if
Liverpool had had so many peeps at New York’s water-front that it felt it must do
something’.46 Priestley here implies that the city is looking outwards across the Atlantic,
rather than inwards to the rest of the county and country. Indeed, the dockfront would have
been the entrance to the city in its heyday, rather than the orientation which many will
experience today, arriving via rail at Lime Street Station at the opposite side of the central
city area. Many American companies used Liverpool as a terminus port or as a gateway to
Europe, just as British companies shipped out from there to the rest of the world. There is
not the negative implication of Matt Simpson’s line ‘The streets drag down to docks’,47 but
rather, as Richard Passmore dryly notes, ‘Whatever I had learned in my Latin class, in
Liverpool all ways led to the Pier Head’ (MM5, 37). The American liners, such as those of
the Inman Line, would have taken over Princes Dock as their home (although today US
container ships mainly dock at Royal Seaforth). The landing stage of the next door Pier
44
Interview with Kevin Male, January 2011.
John Cornelius, Liverpool 8 (London: John Murray, 1982), p. 13-4.
46
From Mersey Minis Volume 2: Living, ed. by Deborah Mulhearn (Liverpool: Capsica, 2007), p. 25.
Further references appear after quotations in the text as ‘MM2’.
47
Simpson, p. 50.
45
34
Head was, by the time of the childhoods of the Merseybeat poets, mostly reserved for ferry
trade, and so perhaps the place most likely to have frequented by them.48
For the people of Liverpool, the links to America were visually apparent in another way. The
young men who worked on the transatlantic liners (mostly passenger ships) had direct
contact with Americans, who, in the post-war period, were ‘envied as being modern and
stylish’, and Lane notes that: ‘American fashions were copied by Liverpool tailors from
clothes brought by seamen on the Eastern seaboard of the USA’.49 These men became
known as ‘Cunard Yanks’, so-named after the major British shipping company and the
specific influence of the cultural centre of New York as a major destination for the liners.
For most of the UK, the cinema was the only link to American culture, but for those in ports
such as Liverpool, what was happening on the big screen could be accessed in other ways by
this audience.
There was a ‘long-standing direct link’ between Liverpool and the US through seamen who
‘deserted, worked ashore on the waterfront in New York or Boston’ and then signed on to a
return voyage to their home city.50 Pat O’Mara also mentions clothes as one particular
influence of the American trade.51 He describes himself wearing his ‘very English
“American tailored” suit’ and looking forward to getting across the sea to ‘New York! New
York of the plentiful, of the real American suits (not the preposterous Liverpool imitations
he now wore), of the dance, of every thing he claimed to like best’.52 Working-class
dandyism is an important trend in post-WWII culture, as a kick against tradition and
traditional styles, and in a port city such as Liverpool access to such sartorial statements
would have been common.53 But there was also another phenomenon which the Cunard
48
Aside from being a means of getting between Liverpool and Birkenhead, the ferries were also
popular because of the bar on board. Once the ferry had left shore, it could not be raided, and so was
often used as a place where one could reliably drink underage. The Philosophy in Pubs Members
commented on this ‘end to the night’ in my interviews with them on 13 January 2011, in Liverpool.
49
Lane, Gateway of Empire, p. 108.
50
Lane, City of the Sea, p. 81.
51
Interestingly, Melville represents the opposite side of this transatlantic principle operating in the
Victorian period, as Redburn tells us he would fall into ‘reveries’ about ‘how I would bring home
with me foreign clothes of a rich fabric, and princely make, and wear them up and down the streets,
and how grocers’ boys would turn back their heads to look at me’ (Redburn, 45-6). Perhaps this
indicates the shift in cultural power which occurred in the nineteenth century, from the British
Empire’s prominence to the USA’s standing post-WWII.
52
O’Mara, p. 243, 293.
53
See, for example, Robert Elms, The Way We Wore: A Life in Threads (London: Picador, 2006).
Throughout his memoir Elms links music and fashion, discussing group identity formation and youth
culture’s use of fashion as a reaction against both the Establishment and other subcultural groups. In
his introduction, he describes meeting a Liverpudlian lawyer at a party: ‘We weren’t just talking
clothes, we were running through our shared youths, our communal experience of growing up as
working-class urban boys in a culture where what you wore determined who you were’ (Elms, p. 6).
35
Yanks brought back before it was available in the rest of Britain: the popular music. The
musical side of Merseybeat will be dealt with in Chapter Four, but this phenomenon
deserves exploration here.
Michael Brocken, in Other Voices: Hidden Histories of Liverpool’s Popular Music Scenes,
1930s-1970s, believes that ‘much hot air has been expended concerning the role of Cunard
Yanks in the history of Liverpool’s musical development’,54 especially by the producers of
the film Cunard Yanks, whose synopsis states that these seamen ‘were the direct link
between the history of the Liverpool sound and the Beatles’.55 Whilst this statement
undoubtedly overstates the effect of the liner trade, much anecdotal evidence does exist for
their influence. To suggest that this link is more than just ‘hot air’, Cunard Yanks
incorporates original 8mm film shot by seamen in Liverpool and New York, including live
music footage, showing what was actually available to – and consumed by – these men. The
Cunard Yanks undeniably provided an important social link with American goods and
attitudes, bringing their experiences directly to their families and friends back home. John
McNally of the Searchers remembers that ‘most people in Liverpool had some relation who
went to sea and could bring record imports in’,56 and Country singer Charlie Landsborough
(born in Birkenhead in 1941) says that ‘My brothers were all sailors ... Apart from the
guitars and all the music, they brought home gifts from all around the world’.57 The Beatles
connection may come from the fact that both John Lennon’s and George Harrison’s fathers
worked on the liners. Indeed, Du Noyer believes that Jimmie Rodgers’ ‘Waiting for a Train’
was ‘among the records that George’s seaman Dad brought back from New York – along
with the machine to play them on – and it led the boys to take up guitar’.58
Paul Farley appropriates the voice of one of the American sailors themselves in ‘The
Colonists’, which gives one side of the story:
I had orders to land at Liverpool
and find dockside shebeens so the boys
could trade our shiny, ocean-worn 45s 59
54
Michael Brocken, Other Voices: Hidden Histories of Liverpool’s Popular Music Scenes, 1930s1970s (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010), p. 111-112.
55
Cunard Yanks, dir. by Dave Cotterill and Ian Lysaght, (Souled Out Films, 2007).
56
Spencer Leigh, Let’s Go Down the Cavern: The Story of Liverpool’s Merseybeat (London:
Vermillion, 1984), p. 30.
57
Charlie Landsborough, cited in Sara Cohen, Decline, Renewal and the City in Popular Music
Culture: Beyond the Beatles (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), p. 84.
58
Paul Du Noyer, Liverpool Wondrous Place: From the Cavern to the Capital of Culture (London:
Virgin Books, 2007), p. 60. It must be noted, however, that John Lennon had little to do with his
father whilst he was growing up.
59
Paul Farley, The Boy from the Chemist is Here to See You (London: Macmillan, 1998), p. 18.
36
Farley’s ‘ocean-worn 45s’, a reference to the EP record format (phased out in the 1960s but
still popular with the Beatles), bring music to the foreground, and the poem continues:
each click was formed within a tilting swell,
each drizzle patch describes a squall of spray;
every disc is playing something else
beyond its backbeat and its middle eight 60
With the benefit of hindsight, Farley gives the poem a twist at the end, referring to the
Mersey Beat phenomenon of the 1960s which came from the influence of the ‘45s’:
I told them how
a sound would fan out from this port one day,
how there’d be sea-lanes of bluejeans bound
for Minsk and Kiev, how records would burn
like bibles. But they only laughed.
One even asked if I’d take a polygraph.
I smiled – his use of that word in itself
meaning our B-movies were having some effect. 61
The idea that ‘records would burn/ like bibles’ probably refers (as this poem was written
decades after the period it invokes) to Lennon’s oft-quoted statement that the Beatles were
bigger than Jesus and the subsequent burning of Beatles’ records in the US. The last line
here clearly references the cinema which, as mentioned above, was mainly how American
culture infiltrated British society.
For Patten, in ‘There Is A Boat Down By The Quay’, it is the seamen themselves he recalls
as part of this exchange, rather than what they brought back:
I knew its crew once,
Those boys manacled to freedom
Who set sail over half a century ago
And were like giants to me.
(PSP, 163)
He is ‘A solitary child in awe of oceans’, who ‘longed to be among them’ (PSP, 163), even
while he recognises the paradox of being addicted to this freedom. The poem continues:
I longed to be a part of them –
Those ghosts who set sail in my childhood,
Those phantoms who shaped me,
That marvellous crew for whom
I have stretched a simple goodbye
Out over a lifetime.
60
61
(PSP, 163)
Farley, p. 18.
Farley, p. 18-9.
37
The last couplet stretches that farewell metaphor into his relationship to Liverpool, the city
he left quite early in his career but has not been able to divorce himself from.
As the Cunard Yanks and other merchant seamen shaped Patten’s childhood, so too did they
shape that of many Liverpudlians mid-twentieth century. www.cunardyanks.org is a website
devoted to recording the stories of these generations of young men, and the memories here
often refer to the clubs in New York and the music heard there. Importantly, they also record
‘coming home to the local dance and regaling all the boys with exploits’.62 A 1998 BBC
programme about the music scene in 1960s Liverpool – Whole Lotta Money, presented by
Zoot Money, which McGough contributed to – makes this link explicit. Money tells the
audience that: ‘Liverpool’s merchant seamen were the first to bring back jazz and blues
records from America. The passenger liners and cotton trade saw to that’
(McGough/13/2/55). This is backed up in print by George Melly’s reference to British jazz
musicians who ‘had heard bop live in New York during their shore leaves while serving in
Geraldo’s navy ... Geraldo, a pre-war band leader, had the contract to supply bands for the
transatlantic liners after the war.’63 References to the music of the time usually cite the
American connection, as in Hampson’s ‘st thomas st: requiem & blues’:
irish
country & western
black music
brought back
from america
(Seaport, 49)
The poem has another period indicator in the title, ‘1. another mirror: 1962-65’, as well as
the apparent instruction that the poem is ‘for guitars and harmonica’ (Seaport, 49), further
heightening the music’s importance and tying it to a particular phase of music-making in
Liverpool.
Tony Crane of the Mersey Beats talks in the Zoot Money programme mentioned above
about buying records to learn how to cover them, to play at the dance halls, records ‘by
small independent American labels which you couldn’t get in anywhere else in the country.
It’s because it was a port and they were coming in off the ships’ (McGough/13/2/55). There
were other ways, however, in which the city’s port acted as a musical stimulus. Many
American performers started their British tours in Liverpool, either simply because that was
62
Jackie Samuels, http://www.cunardyanks.org/Tall%20Tales6.htm [accessed 22 March 2011]. It
must be noted that the Cunard Yanks website has named the memoir section ‘Tall Tales’, implying
they might not be entirely believable.
63
George Melly, Revolt into Style: The Pop Arts in the 50s and 60s (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1989), p. 24.
38
where their ships docked or because they were contracted to entertain the US airmen at
Burtonwood. Similarly, Liverpudlians also had access to the American Forces Network
radio. What is significant about the anecdotes mentioned above is that the American
products that were available to them would not have been so readily available for their
contemporaries elsewhere in the UK.
Whilst Spencer Leigh’s study of Mersey Beat bands’ cover versions of American music
found that (contrary to Tony Crane’s memory quoted above) the songs they used were
available in the UK,64 it does not make the Cunard Yanks’ involvement any less real or
important in the day-to-day life of Liverpudlians. The Country & Western musician Les
Johnson thinks that ‘There must have been a market for this stuff – the Cunard Yanks were
supplying a real need ... bringing things that were already known but might be a little
difficult to get your hands on.’65 The suggestion here is that it was more a case of the Cunard
Yanks shipping to order rather than bringing in the vinyl equivalent of the exotica Cornelius
remembers (mentioned above). In fact, it was almost certainly a combination of the two
aspects, especially as communal listening between neighbours was prevalent in the city.66
The obvious visual presence of the Cunard Yanks came too from their clothes. ‘st thomas st:
requiem & blues’ tells the reader ‘how hip/ we were’ (Seaport, 49), showing a selfconscious concern for style. The self-awareness is also evident in the tales of the Cunard
Yanks. One recalls ‘the gear’, a Scouse idiom for clothes:
Every colour and shade in the rainbow, stripes, checks, herringbone, if it wasn’t in
New York it didn’t exist. Shirts, I remember pressing my nose against Harry
Cotler’s window, full of just shirts, every shade of blue, pink, yellow, grey, red, oh
yes, and white ones too. Tie City, 1000’s of ties, cuff links. With our mohair suits,
pin-tab or Mr B shirts (remember them?) Slim Jim ties, Ox blood moccasins, Thom
McCann’s of course, we thought we looked like Sinatra or Curtis, okay so we could
dream, but dressed up in Yankee gear we were halfway there.67
Specific clothes and music are also given precedence in ‘you can’t dance to art’, which
Hampson subtitles ‘(merseybeat 1962-64)’. After evoking the ‘chord/ A minor’ played via a:
tiny amp
Vox AC30
(amp &
64
See Spencer Leigh, ‘Growing up with the Beatles’, in The Beat Goes On: Liverpool, Popular
Music, and the Changing City, ed. by Marion Leonard and Robert Strachan (Liverpool: Liverpool
University Press, 2010), pp. 28-42, p. 35.
65
Les Johnson, cited in Brocken, p. 112.
66
Music, both in Liverpool and for this movement, will be discussed further in Chapter Four.
67
Unnamed correspondent, http://www.cunardyanks.org/Tall%20Tales.htm [accessed 22 March
2011].
39
speaker
combined)
(Seaport, 48)68
His short poem then turns to fashion, with the guitarist wearing a ‘collarless/jacket’ and
‘cuban-heeled/ boot’ (Seaport, 48), a style which marks the subject of this poem as
belonging to this specific era. Hampson’s ending comments on ‘the simplicity’ (Seaport, 48)
of both the music and the fashion, although this line could equally refer to his content and to
the rendering. The poem clearly evokes a particular period of time, but the short lines and
the fine line breaks mean that each word or phrase appears as equally important on the page.
‘Poem’ by Mike Evans (who was a member of the Mersey Beat band The Clayton Squares
and Henri’s The Liverpool Scene), begins by evoking the industrial side of the port in the
city:
The black-walled streets
will never be
the same
again
the oily rains
that wash
the pavements
from Pierhead to Central
anoint me
(TLS, 53)
Like ‘you can’t dance to art’, the love poem continues with precise references to the fashions
and music of this specific time and place:
Now I wear
a button-down
heart
with her love
on the
inside
and a beat
you can
twist
to.
(TLS, 53)
Button-down shirts were an American invention mainly used by sports players until the
1950s when the casual style came into fashion in America (and then subsequently
68
The AC30 was actually designed by Vox as a more powerful version of the original AC15 (15 watt)
amplifier. The AC30 weighed 60.94 lbs, standing 21.25” tall, whereas the AC15 weighed 47.62lbs,
and was 17.32” tall. It is likely that Hampson has confused the two, using the name of the later amp
when meaning the earlier, more portable, version. (Source: www.voxamps.com/customclassic/ac30cc/
and www.voxamps.com/customclassic/ac15cc/ and technical support contact [accessed 22 March
2011].)
40
Liverpool), and the heartbeat probably refers to a dance which was banned in some Northern
dance halls for being too provocative.69
The ‘smart-suited, style-setting Cunard Yanks’70 were also a source of other popular cultural
items to Liverpool, such as comic books. American freight runs often included bales of
comics as ballast on the journey to Liverpool, or carried orders placed by the American
servicemen and their families stationed at bases such as Burtonwood. During the first half of
the twentieth century there was a marked difference between American comics and British
ones. The contemporary terminology highlights this: we have American ‘comic books’,
versus British ‘funny pages’. In America, it was the Golden Age of superheroes, and –
unaffected by paper rationing during the Second World War – they were usually full colour
and included advertisements for all manner of exciting products alien to British shores.71
Patten recalls the American comics as having ‘the intensity of stained glass windows’
against which ‘The Beano or The Dandy seemed insipid to me’.72 Kevin Male particularly
cites the advertisements as a draw: ‘I think the best thing about them was the adverts, these
amazing things they seemed to have in America’.73 Typical ads changed little over the period
relevant here, although in the 1950s a Comics Code curtailed excessive advertisements and
controlled what could be printed, leaving two main categories, ‘first, toys, gadgets, and
trinkets that one could obtain through the mail … second, there were correspondence
courses’.74
For the Merseybeat poets, whose poems are full of vivid visual imagery, these comics were a
normal part of their childhood as well as later becoming ironised and ‘cool’. In addition, the
Batman image was circulated in Liverpool itself outside of the comic book realm, as a result
of the Adam West TV show. For example, the image was appropriated for a variety of
everyday advertisements, such as for Cousins’ pies: ‘ABC TV’s Batman cometh with Steak
69
‘The Twist’ dance came from the song of the same name, originally released by Hank Ballard in
1959, but popularised by Chubby Checker the next year.
70
John Belchem and Donald Macraid, ‘Cosmopolitan Liverpool’, in Liverpool 800: Culture,
Character and History, ed. by John Belchem (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2006), pp. 31192, p. 388.
71
See two facsimile collections of advertisements are Miles Beller and Jerry Leibowitz, Hey Skinny!
Great Advertisements from the Golden Age of Comic Books (San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1995),
and Kirk Demarais, Mail-Order Mysteries: Delightful Treasures from Vintage Comic Book Ads (San
Rafael: Insight Editions, 2011). Steve Conley also has an online collection of old advertisements,
including ‘testimonials’ from members of the public listing what they themselves remember:
www.steveconley.com/comicads.htm [accessed 22 March 2011].
72
Brian Patten, ‘Extracts from Memoir’ in The Reader, 46 (2012), pp. 19-24, p. 23.
73
Interview with Kevin Male, January 2011.
74
Jean-Paul Gabilliet, Of Comics and Men: A Cultural History of American Comic Books (Jackson:
University of Mississippi Press, 2010), p. 135. This chapter (pp. 134-138) also includes a chart
describing the evolution of the number of advertisement pages in comic books 1938-1943.
41
and Kidney pies, one of Cousins’ meaty tasty hot lines’ reads the advert in a shop window
which Henri and McGough are nonchalantly leaning against in The Liverpool Scene (fig
1.3), and both wrote poems about this superhero, which will be discussed in Chapter Four.
Jeff Nuttall includes comic books in his list of what he deems popular culture: ‘original
comic-book super-heroes, of SPLAT and BAM and ZOWIE’.75 Patten’s ‘Little Johnny’s
Confession’ contains no KA-POWs, but the police report does ask:
Have you seen him,
He is seven years old,
likes Pluto, Mighty Mouse
and Biffo The Bear
(TMS1, 96)
This is, tellingly, a mix of American and British comic book characters, all of whom Patten
himself would have been aware of as a seven year old in Sefton.76 The bundles of comics
which the transatlantic ships used for ballast ended up discarded on the dockside, abandoned
for anyone to take, but the popularity of these American comics was also made into a
business opportunity for one Lodge Lane newsagent, as Kevin Male remembers:
There used to be this newsagent at the top of Lodge Lane and he used to sell all the
American comics – the Superman, the Green Lantern... I think he had a son or he
knew people who went overseas, they’d bring shelf-loads of these things back, they
were in no particular order but you didn’t care. You know you’d maybe buy one
January 1961 and the next one May 1962, but you didn’t really care, you just wanted
superheroes.77
It didn’t matter that they were often out of date, out of sequence, and had the price in cents
on the cover; these comics were part of the childhood of many children in the dockside and
Toxteth areas.
For Patten, comics, the cinema, and US TV imports are representative of childhood
innocence, and he is conscious that those ‘celluloid companions’, met in the ‘sixpenny
childhood seats’ (TMS1, 97), have deserted him now as an adult:
We killed them all simply because we grew up;
We made them possible with our uneducated minds
And with our pocket money 78
75
Jeff Nuttall, Bomb Culture (London: MacGibbon & Kee, 1968), p. 23.
Disney’s Pluto is Mickey Mouse’s dog; Mighty Mouse an American cartoon, and was later part of a
comic strip; Biffo the Bear featured in the British comic The Beano.
77
Interview with Kevin Male, January 2011.
78
Brian Patten, Little Johnny’s Confession (London: Allen & Unwin, 1967), p. 21. Further references
appear after quotations in the text as ‘LJC’.
76
42
‘Where are you now, Batman?’, which appears in The Mersey Sound, exists alongside
‘Where are you now Superman?’, printed in his first solo collection Little Johnny’s
Confession. The ‘Superman’ poem also appears, with very minor differences, in The
Liverpool Scene anthology, published the same year as The Mersey Sound. The themes are
clearly important enough to Patten, in the mid-1960s, to have produced two similar works.79
Patten is much younger than the other two Merseybeat poets, being 21 in 1967 compared to
30 and 35, as McGough and Henri were respectively. His childhood was closer to him, much
fresher in his memory than that of the other two, who had both been to university and been
in employment, placing some distance between themselves and their childhood selves. In
fact, when introducing ‘Where are you now, Batman?’ for the Penguin Audio Cassette,
Patten sets the poem up as being connected to the cinema of his youth, by saying: ‘At the top
of the street in which I lived as a kid, there was a cinema called The Magnet. I’d go there
every Saturday morning to watch the serials. This is a poem remembering that time.’80 Patten
also fuses comic book and cinema characters in his works, remembered from his childhood,
whereas McGough and Henri (in ‘Goodbat Nightman’ and ‘Batpoem’, discussed in Chapter
Four) use a specific representation of Batman which they experienced as adults, rather than
recalling characters from their own childhood period.
Patten’s opening question – ‘Where are you now, Batman? Now that Aunt Heriot has
reported Robin missing’ (TMS1, 97) – is interesting. Robin’s aunt is called Harriet in the
ABC TV series. This misnaming could be a mishearing or a misremembering. However, the
sense in both poems of removal from such childhood characters suggests a deliberate
misnaming (especially as the ABC TV series was contemporaneous to the time of writing).
He ponders here ‘Must all be deaf... or dead...’ (TMS1, 97), subtly changed in ‘Superman’ to
simply ‘Must be all dead’ (LJC, 20): whilst the first example is tempered by the indecisive
use of the ellipsis, the second example gives a real sense of finality, cutting the ties between
his childhood companions and his adult self.
Childhood characters are also used to represent lost innocence in ‘Bang’ by Mike Evans,
printed in The Liverpool Scene anthology:
79
The differences are that the LJC version contains no breaks, presenting the poem as one unit instead
of the four stanzas in TLS. Superman fails to find new ‘roles’ in LJC, ‘parts’ in TLS. In LJC, ‘we
believe’ the adult world is more real, whereas in TLS ‘we are convinced’ it is so (LJC, pp. 20-1, TLS,
pp. 26-7).
80
Adrian Henri, Roger McGough, and Brian Patten, The Mersey Sound, prod. by Richard Carrington
(Penguin Audiobooks, 0140865357, 1997).
43
And I never stopped
running
from the day they told me
the cowboys and indians
at the
bottom
of my garden
were all
dead.
(TLS, 34)
There is a link here between the Country music which is so important in the musical
development of the city (see Chapter Four) and the cinematic trend of the 1950s for
Westerns, which were shown in Liverpool cinemas, as well as the traditional children’s
game of ‘Cowboys and Indians’. The idea of the speaker running also recalls Patten’s ‘Little
Johnny’ sequence, as Johnny is a fugitive on the run from the police due to his actions. The
police report of ‘Little Johnny’s Confession’ mentioned earlier cites his favourite cartoon
characters, while the poem ‘Little Johnny takes a trip to another planet’ is evocative of Flash
Gordon’s adventures, a serial shown at the Saturday matinee.
For The Liverpool Scene, Edward Lucie-Smith made the editorial decision to place the three
poets’ superhero poems one after another: Patten’s accusatory ‘Where are you now,
Superman?’ is followed by McGough’s parody ‘Goodbat Nightman’, culminating with the
political challenge of Henri’s ‘Batpoem’. This superhero imagery also appears on the front
cover of The Liverpool Scene – see fig 1.4. The cover briefs for the original edition of The
Mersey Sound, mentioned in the Introduction for their marketing strategy, which are held in
the Bristol Penguin Archive Project, also pick up on the superhero theme, specifically
wanting ‘something alive and rowdy and pop’ which refers to the ‘highly popular’ images
the team see in the poets’ work: ‘Batman, the Liverpool scene, suspender belts, etc.’.81
Marketing aside, what the use of superheroes and comic books shows is that, as shall be seen
throughout this thesis, the Merseybeat poets are drawn to images and ideas which they can
share with their audience in the full knowledge of the audience’s recognition and
understanding. And more than this, the real importance of the Batman and Superman image
is that it is representative of the crossmedia urge. Henri, McGough, and Patten all take
inspiration from characters originating in comic books or on the screen, and use these within
their own work, be it literary or musical, to further new ideas. Henri’s poem ‘Batpoem’
exists as a printed work, but also is transformed into a more obviously politically nuanced
piece through use of a contemporary – iconic – American TV series figure as a
81
Cover Brief, 3 October 1966, Penguin Archives at Bristol University, DM 1107 / D 103.
44
representative of America. McGough’s parody of the same comic book superhero also aligns
his poem with the TV version but also contrasts this contemporary TV show with traditional
English nursery lullaby form. Patten’s poem works visually on the page to represent the
same techniques as comic book letterers, as well as conjuring up a very specific set of screen
icons. There is also an ironic engagement with the ABC TV show as contemporary popular
culture, which functions as a comment on the display of Americana brought into the city by
the Cunard Yanks and through television and cinema.
Thus, while Liverpool has long been a stopping-off point for a wide spectrum of transient
visitors, immigrants and emigrants, it is particularly the seamen who docked and spent time
(and money) in port who had a clear impact on the city. However, of all the sailors, it was
the Cunard Yanks who have had the greatest impact. John Belchem uses the term ‘cultural
implant’82 to refer to the goods which the Cunard Yanks brought back. The clothes and the
music were two very obvious indicators of a person’s social identity. Paradoxically, the
emphasis here is on local identity achieved through transatlantic borrowing: these were local
working-class men bringing home new material goods and also a stance appropriated in the
more socially informal cities of North America. However, as Sara Cohen suggests, although
the Cunard Yanks were important, there were plenty of other ways in which Liverpudlians
had access to American popular culture.83 The AFN and Burtonwood base, as mentioned
previously, are the most important in terms of musical integration of the two cultures, but
there was also the cinema, newspapers and magazines, and the post-World War Two influx
of American advertising. These were also ways in which the entire country began to
encounter American culture. Nevertheless, in Liverpool the impact was on the streets, in the
people, on a quotidian level. In fact, in the aptly-titled Gateway of Empire, Lane recognizes
that the importance of the idea of the sailor is ‘hard to exaggerate’: in a city ‘saturated with
port activity it is not so surprising that the idealized seafarer should come to be regarded as
the ultimate expression of what it meant to be a man’.84
LIVERPOOL 8
Whereas Henri grew up in Birkenhead, Patten was brought up in the city itself, in Wavertree
and Sefton, leaving school aged 15 to work on the Bootle Times. At 17, in 1963, he moved
to an attic in Canning Street, Liverpool 8, and it was from here that he became a crucial part
82
John Belchem, Merseypride: Essays in Liverpool Exceptionalism, rev. edn. (Liverpool: Liverpool
University Press, 2006), p. 61.
83
See Cohen, Decline, pp. 30-31.
84
Lane, Gateway of Empire, p. 10.
45
of the poetry scene of the 1960s. The attic appears in some early Patten poems, such as
‘After Breakfast’, where he has:
... coffee and a view
Of teeming rain and the Cathedral old and grey but
Smelling good with grass and ferns
(TMS1, 99)
His new status, suggested by him having his own room with a view, is also reflected in the
reference to ‘coffee’, which was still rare in Liverpool at this time, and is associated with a
certain kind of lifestyle, that of bohemians and students.85 McGough tells the reader of this
lifestyle, referring to the ‘the young Beats in the city’s coffee bars’, explicitly stating that the
‘most exciting’ coffee bars:
were the ones that stayed open late and catered for students, artists and the beatniks
who were appearing on the scene, the Masque, the Picasso, the Basement, run by a
local painter Yenkel Feather, and best of all, Streate’s.86
Whilst Liverpool as a whole is clearly a contributing factor to the creation of the movement,
it is the specific area around this social scene which influenced the poets. This area, east of
the city centre, was – and is now officially – called Toxteth (from the parkland which can be
seen on thirteenth century maps), but the poets consistently use the contemporary postcode
term to claim and create their own space.87
The built environment of Liverpool 8 was a ‘district of beautiful, fading, decaying Georgian
terrace houses’ (TLS, 13) when the Merseybeat poets experienced it, but owed its creation to
rich shipping magnate families during the early nineteenth century. As we have seen, the
city is bound up with the port: it is money from shipping that built it and shipping that
sustained it. Quentin Hughes’s 1969 survey describes Canning Street, where both Henri and
Patten lived in the 1960s, as ‘typical of many once-fine Georgian streets which stretch across
the hillside east of the Anglican Cathedral’.88 Considering the date when this book was
published, it is perhaps inevitable that Hughes continues:
This is the famous Liverpool 8, once peopled by rich merchants and now the flats of
artists, poets and students – a variegated cosmopolitan area of some character. The
pattern continues along Percy Street (No. 28), Huskisson Street, Catherine Street,
85
McGough’s ‘first cappuccino’, in ‘El Cabala, a glass-fronted, airy café on Bold Street’, is
considered a significant moment, both because of its novelty and for what it represents of this lifestyle
(McGough, Said and Done: the autobiography [London: Random House, 2005], p. 142).
86
McGough, Said, p. 142-3.
87
See fig 1.5 for a 1965 map of the area, with postcode boundaries, and fig 1.6 for Cornelius’s sketch
of the area, with certain important places marked.
88
Quentin Hughes, Liverpool (City Buildings Series) (London: Studio Vista, 1969), p. 49.
46
Falkner Square and Upper Parliament Street to eventual oblivion in the twilight
zones.89
The last comment is telling. The ‘twilight zones’ are the crowded peri-urban streets which
make up much of the postcode further away from the city centre. In recent critical writings,
the area has been quite clearly labelled as a ‘bohemian, multicultural district’,90 ‘the
bohemian district’,91 and even a ‘mythologised bohemian quarter’.92 Phil Bowen’s first
reference to the area in his biography of the scene is that: ‘in the fifties, with the exception of
Soho, the place for any Aspirational painter, poet, musician, bohemian or “bon viveur” on a
tight budget was Liverpool 8’.93 Henri states that: ‘the reason I moved back to Liverpool in
1956 was because it was an artists’ town, cheap to live in’, and, although it did have ‘a
thriving bohemia based on the inner-city Georgian/Victorian area’ of Liverpool 8, it was
primarily socioeconomic factors which led him there on his return from Art School in
Durham (LA, 35). The two factors feed off each other: the area is cheap to live in, and near
to the Art School, so attracts artists, which creates a certain scene; then because there is a
certain scene, more artists are attracted to it. Liverpool 8 was incredibly important for the
Merseybeat poets, as Henri says: ‘I cannot imagine what it would have been like to be a poet
and not live here; or, indeed, whether I would have become a poet at all’ (LA, 38).
One of the reasons that Liverpool 8 was so important was that the poets not only lived but
also performed there. Most of the pubs, clubs, and cafés they socialised in were within
‘their’ quarter, or easily accessible in the city centre which abuts this district. Henri, who has
many poems with similar titles to ‘Poem for Liverpool 8’, links the social aspect of the area
with the local geography. He is:
drunk jammed in the tiny bar in The Cracke
drunk in the crowded cutglass Philharmonic
drunk in noisy Jukebox O’Connor’s
(A, 31)
As the poem continues the reader also encounters ‘drunken lintels falling architraves/
Georgian pediments peeling above toothless windows’ (A, 32) which automatically link the
89
Hughes, Liverpool, p. 49.
Jon Murden, ‘“City of Change and Challenge”: Liverpool Since 1945’, in Belchem, 800, pp. 393487, p. 426.
91
Sam Gathercole, ‘Facts and Fictions: Liverpool and the Avant-Garde in the late 196-0s and 70s’, in
Centre of the Creative Universe: Liverpool and the Avant-Garde, ed. by Christopher Grunenberg and
Robert Knifton (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2007), pp. 134-155, p. 136.
92
Darren Pih, ‘Liverpool’s Left Bank’, in Grunenberg and Knifton, pp. 112-133, p. 114.
93
Phil Bowen, A Gallery To Play To: The Story of the Mersey Poets (Exeter: Stride, 1999), p. 35.
90
47
architecture back to the social practice of the earlier section. Yet these venues are not in
Liverpool 8, despite Henri’s title.94
J. Hillis Miller’s Topographies tells us that the ‘power of the conventions of mapping and of
the projection of place names on the place are so great that we see the landscape as though it
were already a map’.95 The Merseybeat poets clearly map their territory, but their ‘Liverpool
8’ is not the same as the official district or postcode boundary. In The Practice of Everyday
Life, Michel de Certeau makes a distinction between place and space, that place becomes
space when practiced, when used. This is exactly what the Merseybeat movement do,
detailing their relationships with and within the city to create the social space of Liverpool 8.
The dust jacket of Henri’s 1969 City (designed by Lawrence Edwards) is a visual
representation of this (fig 1.8). The title ‘City’ is not in type but rather picked out by blockhighlighting parts of the streets to form the letters. The streets on the City jacket cover much
of the area important to Henri, including the addresses of the three venues mentioned above:
Rice Street is just above the bowl of the ‘y’ of ‘city’, Hope Street runs along the tail of the
‘y’, and Hardman Street runs along the top of the word, across the opening of the ‘y’. The
area also includes two of Henri’s homes, the first, 24 Faulkner Square, and the second, 64
Canning Street, are both just to the right of the ‘y’. The cover subtly indicates that the city
means that district, as the map focuses on this area rather than, say, the city centre, or a less
detailed overview. This is continued in the poem, which includes loco-specific references to
Liverpool 8, such as hearing ‘schoolgirl hymnsinging voices into the mist outside
Blackburne House’ (C, 8), as well as those references to everyday life in the city which are
not explicit, such as ‘walking with the dog along the early September already winter
promenade’ (C, 4), but which are clearly Liverpool-based.
What is also significant about the map area chosen is that it encompasses the area north of
the official postcode of Liverpool 8. In his book – succinctly titled Liverpool 8 – John
Cornelius described the three venues quoted previously (Ye Cracke, The Philharmonic, and
O’Connor’s Tavern) as ‘this fantastic three-cornered social scene’ that he found as an art
student during the height of the Merseybeat movement. He continues:
Liverpool 8, although only a mile from the city centre, was like a small enclosed
village where everyone knew everyone else and few people strayed socially from a
handful of regular drinking haunts.96
94
Ye Cracke, 13 Rice Street, L1, The Philharmonic, 36 Hope Street, L1; O’Connor’s Tavern, 12
Hardman Street, L1.
95
Miller, p. 4.
96
Cornelius, p. 34.
48
But this village is a shift from the literal place of Liverpool 8 to the social space of
‘Liverpool 8’. The physical places of the scene were used not simply to ground the poems in
a geographical reality, they also function as a way of recoding the audience’s access to the
city. Henri Lefebvre’s definition of social space, as discussed in The Production of Space,
specifies that it is about relationships – ‘a space is not a thing but rather a set of relations
between things’,97 and, by using these literal places to imply a personal connection, the
social space of Liverpool 8 is created. Cornelius is specifically referencing pubs and bars,
and does not mention the cafés discussed earlier, but it is the social nature of the meeting
places which is most important, and the claiming of them as belonging to a certain group of
people. The Merseybeat ‘Liverpool 8’ is created from within, ignoring the official
boundaries in favour of their own. The poets place importance on some places over others,
appropriating parts of the actual topographical place to confer status on their area.98
This, then, is the area which Henri describes in his poem ‘Liverpool 8’ in The Liverpool
Scene anthology, referring to ‘streets named after Victorian elder statesmen like
Huskisson’.99 There are also references to the two cathedrals, which show what he considers
to be a part of the eponymous Liverpool 8, although the ‘new Cathedral at the end of Hope
Street’, the Roman Catholic one, is actually in Liverpool 3, and the Anglican one ‘which
dominates our lives’ is on the border where Liverpool 8 meets Liverpool 1. This sense of
ownership is repeated again as the Cathedral is seen as ‘towering over the houses my friends
live in’, placing his own social life firmly alongside the geographical details (TLS, 13). Henri
also used Liverpool 8 literally in his paintings: ‘I did a series of assemblage-paintings called
collectively “Liverpool 8”, after the postal address of the district we lived and worked in,
using the detritus, the textures, the graffiti and advertising hoardings of the area’ (LA, 35).100
In another poem connected with his life as a painter, ‘I Want to Paint’, Henri also uses
specifically named places, such as wanting to paint ‘Enormous pictures of every pavingstone
in Canning Street’ (TMS1, 51), or: ‘Père Ubu drunk at 11 o’clock at night in Lime Street’
(TMS1, 52). Henri also wrote a short poem/play, titled ‘Père Ubu in Liverpool’, where the
protagonist is ‘discovered walking round the corner of Lewis’s’ (TLS, 64). In response to the
question ‘Where are we?’, ‘The Bird’ says simply ‘Oh! Lewis’s.’ (TLS, 65). In a handwritten
copy of the work, Henri has drawn the famous Epstein statue, Ubu, and The Bird, complete
with an illustration of how ‘the rain drips off ’is thingie’ (TLS, 65) that The Bird giggles at
97
Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space, trans. by Donald Nicholson-Smith (Oxford: Blackwell,
1991), p. 83.
98
See also fig 1.7, a map of the area with the boundaries of the social space of their ‘Liverpool 8’
delineated.
99
A statue of Huskisson stood in St. James’s cemetery, mere streets away from Henri’s homes in this
period, moved to the Walker Art Gallery in 1968. See Hughes, Seaport, pp. 162-3 on this.
100
See fig 1.9, Autumn and Winter from the Liverpool 8 Four Seasons Painting, with found objects.
49
(fig 1.10). The stage direction for Scene Two is Hardman Street, where ‘Père Ubu is seen
toiling up the hill’ (TLS, 66), and where Ubu gets into an altercation with some Mods
standing outside the Sink Club, which was indeed at 45 Hardman Street.
McGough’s Frinck (1967), a semi-autobiographical fantasy of a young man becoming a
popstar,101 is full of these same real places – specifically ‘Ye Cracke (a pub)’ which ‘ lay not
5 thirsty minutes away from his unpretentious commonorgarden flat’102, or ‘the
Philharmonic (his nightly rendeztous)’.103 Arriving in the latter, Frinck feels ‘Home at last’:
The Phil was crowded as usual. Students, businessmen, nogoodboyos, beats,
doctors, outofworks; one of those rare places in fact where people of varied glasses
congregate. A watershed of social togetherness, as they would say imbiblical times.
A pint-sized palace of walnut, frosted glass and mosaic where they changed the
barmaids as often as they changed the dishcloths.104
The wordplay (which has its sources in Dylan Thomas and e. e. cummings) is typical of the
style which would come to epitomise the Scaffold, and also appears in the writings of John
Lennon, such as Spaniard in the Works. Frinck is another example of Merseybeat work
which gives what Peter Barry refers to in Contemporary British Poetry and the City as
‘cartographic precision’,105 but also utilises the extra-textual Cultural Code, the
‘circumambient cultural geography’,106 to emphasise the sense of place. Liverpool 8
functions as both a backdrop for, and an active character in, the Merseybeats’ work.
An important part of this social world was clearly the pubs. Mike McCartney praises the
Liverpool pub’s ideal of ‘social togetherness’:
Anywhere else in the world, people naturally divide up into their ‘own kind’ when it
comes to drinking. Artists to ‘arty’ bars, city gents to ‘gentle’ bars, pop people to
popular bars etc. ... but not in Liverpool.107
Patten also tells us, in ‘Friends’, that ‘I met them in bars and in railway stations/ And I met
them in borrowed rooms and at bright gatherings’ (PSP, 46). The reference to the railway
stations here again broadens the territory out from the postcode area of Liverpool 8 into the
101
It is interesting that McGough wrote this novella pre-Scaffold, imagining (and satirising) the heady
delights of meeting one’s agent and travelling to London to record, rather than be able to draw on his
own experiences.
102
Roger McGough, Frinck A life in the day of / Summer with Monika (London: Michael Joseph,
1967), p. 9.
103
McGough, Frinck, p. 12.
104
McGough, Frinck, p. 18.
105
Barry, p. 48-9.
106
Barry, p. 158.
107
McCartney, Thank U Very Much, p. 107.
50
city centre.108 Patten has chosen specifically social spaces – ‘bars’, ‘rooms’, ‘gatherings’ –
which are again part of everyday urban life. This social normality is particularly important to
the movement, as will be discussed further in Chapter Three, as the direct relationship with
the audience is fostered by not only the content of the poems but also the places in which
they were reading – exactly the same bars and bright gatherings to which Patten refers.
The poetry-and-jazz scene began, as discussed in the Introduction, in Streate’s Coffee Bar,
on May Street (off Mount Street, again not in Liverpool 8). When the Merseybeat poets
distanced themselves from the poetry-and-jazz scene there they chose Sampson & Barlow’s
on London Road, and later there was The Liverpool Scene residency at O’Connor’s Tavern
(which had the regular public bar on the ground floor and ‘upstairs, slightly more restrained
avant-garde music and poetry evenings’,109 although Paul Morley suggests that this
distinction was less rigid, with ‘long haired rough spoken poets wandering into O’Connor’s
and screaming their poems above the bar noise’110). There were also pre-Scaffold ‘late-night
comedy sketch shows at the Blue Angel Club on the Friday’,111 and, within Liverpool 8
itself, evenings at the Hope Hall (later to become the Everyman Theatre).112 The sheer
number of events and venues during this time shows the importance of the live performance
and explains the emphasis on performance and aural experience within this poetry.
Whilst these venues are not all, strictly speaking, in Liverpool 8, they are within easy reach
of the so-called ‘bohemian quarter’, the area surrounding Hope Street and the Art School
and University. By claiming these venues physically but also talking about them in the
poems performed there, we can see what de Certeau described as ‘spatial stories’
emerging.113 There is ‘a second, poetic geography on top of the geography of the literal’,114
as the poets, using their own voices and their own experiences, seek to ground themselves
even further in the area via the content of the poems as well as the context. By namechecking certain streets and venues the poets situate themselves in a specific place, but
‘Liverpool 8’ was also a short-hand for a cultural experience and the home of a certain
scene.
108
There are no railway stations, suburban or mainline, within Liverpool 8.
Cornelius, p. 36.
110
Paul Morley, ‘Liverpool Surreal’, in Grunenberg and Knifton, pp. 40-55, p. 50.
111
McGough, Said, p. 154.
112
O’Connor’s Tavern, home to Wednesday nights hosted by The Liverpool Scene, was on Hardman
Street. A great number of key venues for a number of Liverpool’s music scenes have existed around
Hardman Street, see discussion and map in Brett Lashua, Sara Cohen, and John Scofield, ‘Popular
music, mapping, and the characterization of Liverpool’, Popular Music History, 4.2 (2010), 126-144,
p. 136-7.
113
de Certeau, p. 115.
114
de Certeau, p. 105.
109
51
In one of Henri’s love poems Liverpool 8 is seen as a hub of creativity with links to major
figures in the arts: ‘William Burroughs sits dunking Pound Cake in coffee waiting for the
last connection’, ‘Kurt Schwitters smiles as he picks up the two pink bus tickets/ we have
just thrown away’, and ‘Parker blows another chorus of Loverman for us’, to name just three
examples from this poem (TMS1, 40).115 This is also an intensely personal poem of place, as
Henri is using his cultural heroes to bless his relationship with Heather Holden, one of his art
students at the Manchester Art College. In fact, Henri’s way of appropriating his heroes and
bringing them into his work will be seen as an important theme throughout this thesis. Many
of the artists listed throughout this particular poem have firm links with Paris in the 1890s.
Kevin Male, slightly younger than these poets, but a keen observer of the scene, also
compares this period to that era.116 Henri is invoking the figures of early modernism to
perhaps suggest something similarly important is happening in his own time. Indeed, in his
essay to the catalogue for a 1997 exhibition of Henri’s artwork of the 1960s, George Melly
described Liverpool 8 as ‘the Liverpudlian equivalent of Montmartre at the turn of the
century’.117 Both this poem and ‘Entry’ also recall the poetry of Frank O’Hara, particularly
his lunch-time poems such as ‘The Day Lady Died’, on the death of Billie Holiday.
O’Hara’s poems are full of references to artists (although these are usually still alive, and
include his friends and colleagues from the New York MOMA, whereas in Henri’s work
they tend to be dead artists from an earlier generation or contemporary artists he is not
personally acquainted with).118
DIASPORIC LIVERPUDLIANS
Neither McGough nor Patten would stay in Liverpool. The work from Patten’s early career
is, as Bowen says of Little Johnny’s Confession, ‘clearly situated in, although not about,
Liverpool’.119 The urban nature of his surroundings comes through in the poems discussed
previously, as well as in poems such as ‘Girl in a Blue Cardigan’, from his second
collection, where he is ‘Watching you in city squares’, the Liverpudlian connection further
115
Kurt Schwitters was one of the artists who inspired Henri, particularly in terms of assemblage or
collage, as will be discussed in Chapter Five.
116
‘There was a sense in the air at that time... Looking back on it... you think it must have been what
people felt being in Paris in the 1890s. You just felt that somehow there was something really special
going on, you didn’t quite know what. Everything seemed to emanate from this place, the music, the
football, the poetry, even the actors as well. You think it’s going to last forever’ (Interview with
Kevin Male, January 2011).
117
George Melly, ‘Pop & Protest: Adrian Henri’s Pop Art of the Sixties’, in Adrian Henri: Art of the
Sixties (Whitford Fine Art: London, 2007), p. 3.
118
For a recent reassessment of O’Hara, see Robert Hampson and Will Montgomery, Frank O’Hara
Now: new essays on the New York poet (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2010).
119
Bowen, p. 88.
52
suggested by the reference to the Mersey Beat music scene, as she is with the ‘Guitarist from
Mike’s group’.120 In addition to ‘city squares’, another common image in the early poetry is
that of the urban party. Indeed, the urban party typifies the early part of the 1960s for Patten.
‘Party Piece’ has ‘woodbines and guinness stains’ (TMS1, 95) at a city party, and similarly
‘Somewhere Between Heaven and Woolworths, A Song’ tells of ‘various all-night parties/
Among the couples on the stairs’ (TMS1, 103). This second poem is specifically situated in
Liverpool, since the named department store was the first in the country, and was a clearly
recognisable part of the city-centre landscape, in the main shopping area of Church Street,
Liverpool 1. ‘You wear the streets like an overcoat’ (PSP, 127), he writes, an image which is
presumably intended to suggest familiarity, but it also implies that one could shrug off the
city at will.
Patten moved out of Liverpool quite soon after the media attention brought about by both the
success of the Beatles and the publication of the poets’ own anthologies in 1967, but many
of his poems remain grounded in the city. Looking back at his childhood area in ‘The
Betrayal’, Patten deals with the destruction of Liverpool as a returning son (rather than as a
resident as Henri does):
While I dozed
Houses outside which gas-lamps had spluttered
Were pulled down and replaced,
And my background was wiped from the face of the earth.
...
What those who shaped me could not articulate
Still howls for recognition as a century closes,
And their homes are pulled down and replaced,
And their backgrounds are wiped from the face of the earth.
(PSP, 146-7)
Patten asserts that his Liverpool past is bound up with the people who ‘shaped’ him: his
mother who is seen in ‘Cinders’, ‘sweeping kitchens/ No fairy godmother appeared, never’
(PSP, 145), or his grandmother, whose ‘Tattoos’ feature as mentioned above. At the same
time his sense of his past is linked to the physical place in the first section quoted here. By
the end of the poem he has returned to the humanity of Liverpool and a sense that they, the
Liverpudlians, are being wiped out, not he who has escaped. Patten is referring here to the
slum clearance programme of Liverpool City Council in the latter half of the twentieth
century. The slum clearance that Patten laments – titling the poem ‘The Betrayal’ clearly
indicates his feelings about the way in which the Council failed its people, destroying not
just bricks-and-mortar houses but people’s homes, representative of their whole lives – is not
the only way in which the city has changed. ‘Haunted places’, de Certeau believes, ‘are the
120
Brian Patten, Notes to the Hurrying Man (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1969), p. 27.
53
only ones people can live in’.121 It is these ‘haunted places’ that slum clearance erases, and it
is precisely these ‘haunted places’ which Patten’s (and Henri’s) poetry represents by linking
places with personal – and person – memories. Something similar happens in Mersey Minis
3, Longing. This contains nostalgic remembrances of what the city used to look like from
natives who have not lived in the city, often, for decades. For Lefebvre, a city is ‘a space
which is fashioned, shaped and invested by social activities during a finite historical
period’.122 Space is not inert but rather each period’s experiences are layered to create
ongoing spatial relations. The reminiscences in Longing cut through the layers, each author
picking up on their own past – presenting their own ‘haunted places’ even where those
places no longer exist outside memory.
Terence Davies’s films explore this same area. In Of Time and the City, Davies returns to his
childhood city to find much has disappeared: ‘The taxi slides through town and my old
senses rise to remember the Majestic there, the Gaumont there or some other long-sincegone remembrance of days gone by’ (MM3, 66). But Davies uses the physicality of place to
disassociate himself from the present time and instead promote a particular past, claiming
the city through his memories of it:
And you, who are young, who do not remember when George Henry Lees was once
so exclusive no-one entered the shop, or the Bon Marché in brown and cream livery,
or when Stoniers was once the Gucci of glassware... But in fifty years time as your
grandchildren point to something new you, too, may say ‘It was different in my day’
or ‘Things are not the same now’ and you, too, may remember the small ecstasy of
going into town to buy something special.
(MM3, 67)
Of Time and the City uses newsreel and other contemporaneous footage to recall the city in
the 1950s and 60s when he was growing up. In both the quotation above and the film’s
commentary Davies constantly reminds the audience that what he considers to be ‘his’ city
no longer exists.123 In this way he explores the experience of diaspora: that it is not only
spatial distance but time that separates him from the city he remembers. We might compare
this with Beryl Bainbridge’s experience. In her English Journey, published 1984, the reader
is faced with what is, for her, uncomfortable reality. Looking out of the Adelphi window,
she tells us: ‘All the landmarks I remembered, gone without trace’ – the Kardomah is
‘obliterated’, the Lyceum tearooms ‘burnt’ and ‘slung onto the refuse tips’ (MM5, 47-8).
121
de Certeau, p. 108.
Lefebvre, p. 73.
123
For more information about this film, see the dedicated website www.oftimeandthecity.com
[accessed 22 March 2011]. The University of Liverpool also ran a two year project, City in Film:
Liverpool’s Urban Landscape and the Moving Image, to visually record the changing face of the city
via film footage from 1897 to the 1980s. The project ran from 2006-2008, and was funded by the
AHRC. See www.liv.ac.uk/lsa/cityinfilm/intro.html [accessed 22 March 2011].
122
54
Bainbridge uses the Medieval ubi sunt motif not as an expression of nostalgia but to show
the transience of her own lifetime’s experience of the city. This sense of destruction is
heightened at the end of the passage where Bainbridge baldly states: ‘Someone’s murdered
Liverpool and got away with it’ (MM5, 48). In A Gallery to Play To, Philip Bowen similarly
laments changes in the city in his ‘Postscript’. For Bowen, the physical places encapsulate
the memories of 1960s, as he lists the places with descriptors and commentary, such as:
‘Streate’s, once the Beat centre of the North-West, and the Basement Cub in Mount Pleasant
(where Yankel wanted a shilling) are long gone’.124 The idea of a ‘lost Liverpool’ that these
quotations mourn, however, is not the way in which the Merseybeat poets themselves dealt
with the city.
McGough tells the reader early in his autobiography of the space his family inhabited: ‘The
first seventeen years of my life were spent within a half mile radius of 11 Ruthven Road, in
an unlovely, unfashionable, part of north Liverpool’.125 At the end of the chapter entitled
‘Geography’ he includes a poem which links him to the people and the streets of the city:
For those early years this was my geography.
My north, my south, I sailed between the two.
Since then I’ve travelled the world and found
That everything I learned, I already knew 126
The last two lines of this poem recall the idea of Liverpool as a world city, while
McGough’s choice of ‘sail’ evokes the maritime. The poem also suggests that the poet did
not need anything outside of his social circle, an attitude which is common in the early work
of the Merseybeat poets. In contrast to the sentimentality of McGough or the lament of
Bowen, Henri’s attitude to the city is that of a long-term resident, accepting the changes and
still loving it. ‘Adrian Henri’s Talking Toxteth Blues’ records the so-called ‘Toxteth Riots’
of July 1981:
Well, I work up this morning, there was buzzing overhead
Saw the helicopter as I got out of my bed,
Smelt the smell of burning, saw the buildings fall,
Bulldozers pulling down next door’s wall.
Toxteth nightmare . . .
. . . yes . . .
. . . city with a hangover.
(PA, 39)
The poem uses a specific form of talking blues, which I shall return to in Chapter Four. The
emphasis here is not on his internal emotional response but rather on what he saw, as the
124
Bowen, p. 170.
McGough, Said, p. 16.
126
McGough, Said, p. 17. This poem has not been published in any of McGough’s collections – it is
possible that it was written solely for this autobiography.
125
55
poem continues: ‘Heard the sound of engines in the bright orange night,/ Saw the headlights
blazing, saw the crowd in flight’ (PA, 39). There is still space for a joke, with an allusion to
the musical Evita and the character of Eva Peron in ‘don’t cry for me . . . / . . . Upper Parly’
(PA, 39). He is still connected to the place, but it is significant that this is the first time Henri
refers to this area as Toxteth, perhaps distancing this experience from that of ‘Liverpool 8’
of the 1960s.
WALKING THE CITY
Directions and geographical landmarks are often used to show the writer has a direct
connection with a place (they embody a claim to be an authority on its navigation), in much
the same way as the Merseybeat poets name-check venues and places within their scene to
show their involvement. George Melly, who is from an old Liverpool family, uses direct
geographical references to remind the reader of his connection to the city, as one who has
not lived there for many years:
At the other end of Ullet Road is the Dingle where the 33, leaving ‘the prettier way’
behind it, joined up again with the 1 and 45 emerging from the slums to service
Aigburth Road. Ahead of us, enclosed within this rectangle, lay my childhood.127
Naming particular streets is a recurrent trope for both Merseybeat poets and later writers in
the city. Poems about walking feature as another way of laying claim to the city, inspired
perhaps by the flâneur who walks to reclaim urban space, or the psychogeographer who (via
Surrealism and the Situationists) attributes feelings and moods to places.128 This is evident in
McGough’s poems about the character PC Plod. They are understandably full of references
to his beat, such as walking ‘down Hardman Street’129 away from a rape victim, ‘cruising up
and down old Canning Place’ (ATM, 61), and ‘sitting in St Johns Gardens’ (ATM, 69) before
his removal from the Liverpool Constabulary on the grounds that he has been ‘Appearing in
poems of dubious nature’ (ATM, 70). The ‘spatial story’ is obvious here. For P.C. Plod, on
the beat, the story does indeed begin, as de Certeau says, ‘on ground level, with footsteps’.130
In ‘P.C. Plod versus Maggie May’, for example, he begins on the beat, ‘cruising up and
down old Canning Place’, where he sees Maggie May ‘and followed her on tiptoe’ to the
docks, where, in the morning (when ‘seagulls on ferries were hitching a lift’), Maggie May
127
George Melly, Scouse Mouse, or I Never Got Over It, An Autobiography (London: George
Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1984), p. 7.
128
I am indebted to Merlin Coverley’s work for a background in the history of walking – The Art of
Wandering: the writer as walker (Harpenden: Oldcastle, 2012) and Psychogeography (Harpenden:
Pocket Essentials, 2006).
129
Roger McGough, After The Merrymaking (London: Jonathan Cape, 1971), p. 59. Further
references appear after quotations in the text as ‘ATM’.
130
de Certeau, p. 97.
56
‘spotted him/ and was already halfway down Paradise Street’, eventually catching her and
leading her ‘through the morning rushhour’ (ATM, 61-2). It is not only the names of streets
but also directional attributes which orientate the poems, as McGough claims knowledge of
the map of the city. So, ‘intertwined paths give shape to spaces’.131 Walking the city and
naming the route appropriates the topographical system and again links the poets to the
place.
The geography of the area is, for Henri, usually bound up with personal feelings about the
place itself. Thus City is a love poem connected to place, just like the poem dedicated to
Heather Holden mentioned previously:
Walking through dead leaves in Falkner Square going to the Pakistani shop with
Tony in the October afternoon sunlight thinking of you being woken up in the two
a.m. Blue Angel rock’n’roll darkness by Carl who I hadn’t heard singing thinking of
you thinking of you drinking in the Saturday night everyone waiting no party pub
walking with another girl holding cold hands in the autumn park thinking of you
walking home everynight in Blackburne Place twilight thinking of you thinking of
you.
(C, 10)
The run-on lines and lack of punctuation represent the stream of consciousness, as Henri
spends his hours thinking about the subject of the poem. The situations here are deliberately
everyday: invoking normalcy in combination with spatial naming links his words (and him)
even more closely to the quotidian life of the city and its streets.
The Corkish anthology Liverpool Poets 08 has two poems by Andrew Taylor which use the
walking model, and the volume is itself: ‘Dedicated to Adrian Henri who walked these
familiar streets’ (LP, flyleaf). ‘The First Stirrings of Snow’ not only displays familiarity
with the street names but also uses Henri as he used Schwitters and others:
Adrian Henri’s ghost saying
farewell, when he should be
sat in Mount Street by the fire
(LP, 11)
The use of Mount Street also dates the poem, as this was where Henri lived from the late
1970s. This poem thus references Henri’s later years rather than the 1960s, which were
before Taylor’s own time. In this poem Taylor is placing himself in Liverpool as much as
Henri:
the need
to run and take cover in familiar
streets, where I’d once run with
131
de Certeau, p. 97.
57
a heart full to bursting
(LP, 11)
The second poem by Taylor, ‘City Walks’, makes the urban mapping obvious from the very
title. Again, he is grounding the poem in daily routine and a familiar territory:
Faces familiar by
daily routine and shortcuts to
Tithebarn Street
(LP, 104)
Often the lines are set up as annotations of the places he sees on his walk to work, such as
‘Town Hall on the lip of the hill. Sensing/ the river at the foot of Water Street’, or:
Mathew Street
clogged with cameras and people who were there
in the Sixties.
(LP, 104)
Another anthology (Coles’ Both Sides) brings the changing nature of the area to the fore by
placing Levi Tafari’s ‘Nuh blame Rasta (Dub poem)’ after ‘Adrian Henri’s Talking Toxteth
Blues’, emphasising the different cultural meanings of place for different groups. The title of
Levi Tafari’s ‘Toxteth where I reside (Dub poem)’ gives the reader no doubt as to his
location, and then the text itself offers:
Come with me yes I’ll be your guide
to the city where I reside
let’s take a walk
so we can talk
about Liverpool on Merseyside
(BS, 284)
The poem refers back to the 1960s, when Liverpool ‘went international/ well crucial’ (BS,
284), but places that as a period firmly in the past, as now ‘Toxteth’ is ‘my dwelling place’.
This new Toxteth is the area after the riots:
So forget the ghetto mentality
because we are not ghettoites
we are a talented people
with a lot to give
the oldest Black community in Europe
and we’re positive
(BS, 284)
Is the Toxteth associated with the Black community today different from the Liverpool 8 of
the (almost exclusively white) artists of Merseybeat of the 1960s?
CONCLUSION
58
As we have seen, Henri wrote many poems using ‘Liverpool 8’ as a title – it is unsurprising
that the Corkish anthology specifically says he walked these familiar streets – both
describing and claiming the area as his own. One section of Autobiography in particular lists
street names of the district and is worth quoting here at some length:
Rodney St pavement stretching to infinity
Italian garden by the priest’s house
seen through the barred doorway on Catherine St
pavingstones worn smooth for summer feet
St James Rd my first home in Alan’s flat
shaken intolerable by Cathedral bells on Sundays
Falkner Sq. Gardens heaped with red leaves to kick in autumn
...
Gambier Terrace loud Beatle guitars from the first floor
Sam painting beckoning phantoms hiding behind painted words bright colours
in the flooded catfilled basement
...
Granby St bright bazaars for aubergines and coriander
Blackburne House girls laughing at bus-stops in the afternoon
Blackburne Place redbrick Chirico tower rushing back after love at dinnertime
(A, 31)
Each place name is connected to an image, such as St James Road which does indeed lead to
the Anglican Cathedral, or Granby Street with its plethora of grocers, where there is a rather
more gentrified market today. This connects Henri to his area, and, as the only one of the
three Merseybeat poets who stayed in Liverpool throughout his adult life, Henri is perhaps
best placed to comment on the changing nature of the city. Henri is not comparing the
present with a remembered past, but has a layered history of remembered encounters with
those urban spaces. Walking, for de Certeau, is ‘a space of enunciation’,132 and by giving the
reader an image to accompany a name Henri acts out what his area is for him spatially.
The use of the city in the Merseybeat movement is therefore twofold: first, the poets
physically inhabited the space, performing live and connecting with their local audiences;
and second, they appropriated the names of these spaces into their work to both claim it for
themselves and present both local and national audiences with their interpretation of the city.
The following chapters will also refer to the city – areas, streets, venues – as they appear in
the movement again and again.
132
de Certeau, p. 98.
59
CHAPTER TWO: GINSBERG AND LIVERPOOL
To find the most obvious antecedents of the Merseybeat movement, we need to look, as
Liverpool itself often looked, to America. The work of the Beats, and of Allen Ginsberg in
particular, has often been cited as an influence on the poets, and has been accepted as such
by critics and commentators. For example, in Gladsongs and Gatherings: Poetry and its
social context in Liverpool since the 1960s, edited by Stephen Wade, there are several
matter-of-fact statements to this effect: in Wade’s introduction, we are told the Liverpool
poets have ‘literary antecedents in writers such as ... Allen Ginsberg (1926-97)’;1 Spencer
Leigh’s essay says that, in particular, ‘Adrian Henri’s style is very close to Allen
Ginsberg’s’,2 with David Bateman agreeing that Henri was ‘heavily inspired by New York
Beat poet Allen Ginsberg’;3 Wade’s own essay on Roger McGough has him ‘influenced by
the spontaneity and energy of Kerouac and, to a lesser extent, Allen Ginsberg’;4 and Pete
Townsend names Allen Ginsberg and Gregory Corso as ‘two of the most apparent Beat
influences of the Liverpool writers.’5 Therefore it is clear that, together with the American
popular culture which influences the city of Liverpool, as discussed in the previous chapter,
the Beat scene of the 1950s is clearly regarded as an influence on the Merseybeat poets – yet
the relationship is not as simple as the above statements might lead us to believe.
The Liverpool poets were well aware of what was happening in poetry in America.6 But
instead of those imitations McGough saw produced by some of his contemporaries, writing
‘about New York, about yellow cabs’, the iconic New York taxis that didn’t exist in
Liverpool, the Merseybeat writers were inspired to create their own Liverpudlian works:
‘when we started writing about Liverpool that seemed very gritty and almost ironic. But it
worked for the audience.’7 One of the most important ideas which Merseybeat poetry took
from Ginsberg and his contemporaries was that, seeing a movement so firmly based in the
1
Stephen Wade, ed., Gladsongs and Gatherings: Poetry and its social context in Liverpool since the
1960s (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2001), p. ix.
2
Spencer Leigh, ‘All You Need is Words’, in Wade, Gladsongs, pp. 143-149, p. 144.
3
David Bateman, ‘Adrian Henri: Singer of Meat and Flowers’, in Wade, Gladsongs, pp. 73-102, p.
73.
4
Stephen Wade, ‘The Arrival of McGough’, in Wade, Gladsongs, pp. 7-18, p. 8.
5
Pete Townsend, ‘Jazz Scene, Liverpool Scene: The Early 1960s’, in Wade, Gladsongs, pp. 168-176,
p. 173-4.
6
Both from books and personal connections: there are letters to Patten in the Underdog archives from
American writers such as Diane di Prima (see, for example, Patten/6/1/1/1), and Robert Creeley came
to Liverpool to read at Patten’s invitation (Interview with Brian Patten, April 2012).
7
Interview with Roger McGough, November 2012. See also Roger McGough, Said and Done: the
autobiography (London: Random House, 2005), p. 143; Phil Bowen, A Gallery To Play To: The Story
of the Mersey Poets (Exeter: Stride, 1999), p. 48; and Bruce Cook, The Beat Generation (New York:
Charles Scribner, 1971), p. 154.
60
recording of experience and the importance of the everyday, it made it acceptable for these
Liverpool poets to do the same thing with their own lives.
According to Bruce Cook’s The Beat Generation, the book which sparked this development
in Liverpool was Donald Allen’s The New American Poetry anthology: ‘everybody in town
who was interested in writing seemed to have a copy of it, and they were shouting poems out
of it to one another across crowded pubs’.8 For McGough, another public venue,
coffeehouses (themselves new and exciting at this time), are the scene of similar sharing:
An EP record called Redbird, Logue reading the poetry of Pablo Neruda to the jazz
accompaniment of the Tony Kinsey Quintet, would be passed around and wowed
over by the young Beats in the city’s coffee bars. As was Allen Ginsberg’s rendition
of ‘Howl’.9
From the word ‘rendition’, and the aural medium of the other works mentioned, it is evident
that the poets experienced ‘Howl’ as a recording as well as a printed work.10 This will be
shown as important later in this chapter and in the next. The long or paragraphic line,
composing by the breath-unit, and performance to an audience are some of the aspects which
Merseybeat poetry takes from the American movement and from Ginsberg in particular. For
Henri, the persona which Ginsberg cultivated was also important, which fed into, and came
from, the performance of his work.
Three years after Donald Allen’s anthology, in 1963, Penguin published Gregory Corso,
Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and Allen Ginsberg in volume five of Penguin Modern Poets, an
inexpensive paperback series which aimed to bring modern poetry to the masses.11 The
Merseybeat poets were well aware of the work of – and the glamour attached to – these
writers: McGough’s autobiography bemoans the fact that ‘nothing was happening’ in
Liverpool, in terms of the new poetry, as against being ‘in San Francisco with Ferlinghetti or
in New York with Ginsberg’.12 Ferlinghetti was important for another reason: his City Lights
bookshop and press. Howl and Other Poems was published by Ferlinghetti as part of his
Pocket Poets series, with the iconic black-and-white cover still available in facsimile
8
Cook, p. 154. The New American Poetry 1945-60, ed. by Donald Allen (New York: Grove Press,
1960) also included Frank O’Hara, a poet with whom Henri has a clear affinity, particular in terms of
the use of visual art within poetry.
9
McGough, Said, p. 143.
10
The recording that McGough and his contemporaries would have had access to is either the
Evergreen Records LP, San Francisco Poets (Evergreen Records, EVR-1, 1958), produced in
conjunction with the San Francisco Renaissance issue of Evergreen Review (reissued by Hanover
Records, M-5001, 1959), or Allen Ginsberg Reads Howl and Other Poems, including most of the
contents of the City Lights Pocket Poets book (Fantasy Records, LP 7006, 1959).
11
These Penguin volumes were widely available in central Liverpool bookshops.
12
McGough, Said, p. 143.
61
editions today. In fact, the importance of the book as a cultural artefact is highlighted by
Jonah Raskin (brought up in Long Island, and later to attend Columbia College, studying
under Lionel Trilling just as Ginsberg did) in his introduction to American Scream: Allen
Ginsberg’s ‘Howl’ and the Making of the Beat Generation:
In 1957, at the age of fifteen, I bought for seventy-five cents a copy of the City
Lights paperback edition of Howl and Other Poems with the trademark black-andwhite cover. It was the first book of poetry I ever bought, and it made me feel as
cool as anyone in my high school. 13
This shows how the Pocket Poets book is an important part of how he first experienced
Ginsberg. Raskin continues: ‘Reading it brought initiation into a secret society.’14 The same
reactions were had by poets and writers in England: Spike Hawkins was inducted into this
society by his English teacher, and then ‘found bookshops such as Better Books and tiny
volumes which were marked “City Lights” and I started to read these’.15 The cultural artefact
of the black-and-white book itself is key, as this branding created an instantly recognisable
object. Barry Miles was responsible for stocking these books at Better Books in London:
Howl and Other Poems was the one [of the City Lights books he ordered] that
impressed me the most. It put into words all my ill-formed sixteen-year-old thoughts
and feelings in a way that came as a complete revelation. Ginsberg expressed
everything I was feeling, and he did it in a way that was totally new to me.16
The independent bookshops in Liverpool certainly stocked them. These included Charles
Wilson’s (Renshaw Street, and later a branch in Castle Street) where Ginsberg read in
1965,17 and Philip Son & Nephew (first opened in Church Street, moving to Whitechapel for
this period). Liverpudlians might also have read about the famous 1957 obscenity trial (with
a report by Ferlinghetti published in Evergreen Review in the winter of 1957) and heard
Judge Clayton W. Horn’s verdict that; ‘Howl does have some redeeming social importance,
and I find the book is not obscene’,18 as well as knowing the text itself. Indeed, a fourth print
run of 5,000 extra copies was ordered to meet the demand created by the trial.19
If the previous chapter focussed on the first two syllables of ‘Merseybeat’, this chapter
unpacks the last; how ‘beat’ is Merseybeat? John Clellon Holmes was the first to define the
13
Jonah Raskin, American Scream: Allen Ginsberg’s Howl and the Making of the Beat Generation
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), p. xi.
14
Raskin, p. xi.
15
Spike Hawkins, cited in Jonathon Green, Days in the Life: Voices from the English Underground,
1961-1971 (London: Pimlico, 1998), p. 17.
16
Barry Miles, In The Sixties (London: Jonathan Cape, 2002), p. 53.
17
However, see the discussion on pages 66-7 regarding issues of memory surrounding the location.
18
Clayton W. Horn, cited in Bill Morgan and Nancy J. Peters, Howl on Trial: The Battle for Free
Expression (San Francisco: City Lights, 2006), p. 199.
19
Morgan and Peters, p. 3.
62
word ‘beat’ for a wider audience, although he credits Jack Kerouac with inventing the term.
Holmes’s 1952 article ‘This is the Beat Generation’ defines it thus:
More than a mere weariness, it implies the feeling of having been used, of being
raw. It involves a sort of nakedness of mind, and, ultimately, of soul; a feeling of
being reduced to the bedrock of consciousness. In short, it means being
undramatically pushed up against the wall of oneself. A man is beat whenever he
goes for broke and wagers the sum of his resources on a single number; and the
young generation has done that continually from early youth. 20
Thirty years later, an article Ginsberg wrote for Friction magazine, entitled ‘A Definition of
the Beat Generation’, runs through a similar sequence of meanings, starting with the idea of
exhaustion, but also: ‘at the same time wide-open – perceptive and receptive to a vision’.21
This idea of ‘openness’ or ‘nakedness of mind’ was a particularly relevant aspect of the
movement to Merseybeat poetry. Ginsberg also extends the meaning, saying that Kerouac
‘clarified his intention’ of ‘“beat” as beatific, the necessary beatness or darkness that
precedes opening up to the light, egolessness, giving room for religious illumination.’22 This
aspect of Beat poetry was less relevant to the Liverpool poets, who preferred to stay
grounded in contemporary urban life.
The term ‘Merseybeat’ is also connected to the Mersey Sound, to the English beat music
movement.23 In fact, the Beatles chose their name for the very reason that it could have
different interpretations. They were inspired by Buddy Holly’s backing group the Crickets,
with its ‘nice double meaning, one of them a purely English meaning, which Americans
couldn’t have appreciated’, as being both the name of an insect and a sport, and chose the
name ‘Beatles’ in direct homage to the band, with its own double meaning:
Thinking of the name Crickets, John [Lennon] thought of other insects with a name
that could be played around with. He’d filled books as a child with similar word
play. ‘The idea of beetles came into my head. I decide to spell it BEAtles to make it
look like beat music, just as a joke.’24
20
John Clellon Holmes, ‘This Is The Beat Generation’, in Passionate Opinions: The Cultural Essays
(Fayetteville: The University of Arkansas Press, 1988), pp. 57-65, p. 58-9. Originally published in
The New York Times Magazine, 16 November 1952.
21
Allen Ginsberg, Deliberate Prose: Selected Essays 1952-1995, ed. by Bill Morgan
(Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2000), p. 237
22
Ginsberg, Selected Essays, p. 237. Originally published in Friction, winter 1982.
23
As stated in the Introduction. Terms such as ‘Mersey Beat’, ‘Mersey Sound’, and ‘Liverpool
Sound’ are also often presented as interchangeable in writings about the music of this period.
24
Hunter Davies, The Beatles: The illustrated & updated edition of the bestselling authorised
biography, rev. edn. (London: Cassell Illustrated, 2002), p. 109-110. Playing around with the name,
they became ‘the Silver Beatles’ for the rest of that year, shortening it to ‘the Beatles’ in 1960.
63
Beat music is itself named for the strong beat that the guitar-and-drum-led groups of this
time used so well, but Lennon was also aware of the American literary movement. 25 The
Merseybeat poets clearly have transatlantic links in both their name and work. I shall be
using Allen Ginsberg’s visit to Liverpool in May 1965 as a case study to discuss this; I will
consider the effect that Ginsberg’s visit, and of both his persona and his work around this
time, had on the poets, and on Henri in particular.
LIVERPOOL AS THE CENTRE OF HUMAN CONSCIOUSNESS
Simon Warner’s essay in the exhibition book Centre of the Creative Universe: Liverpool &
the Avant-Garde seeks to answer the question of what exactly Ginsberg meant by the oftquoted (indeed, oft-misquoted) remark that Liverpool is ‘at the present moment the centre of
the consciousness of the human universe’ (TLS, 15).26 This was a quotation deemed so
important that Edward Lucie-Smith made it the entire back cover of The Liverpool Scene
(fig 2.1).
For Phil Bowen, author of the biographical A Gallery To Play To: The Story of the Mersey
Poets, the answer is clear: ‘Henri and the others knew he was talking about the Beatles’. 27
McGough also mentions the Beatles as the likely referent, claiming Ginsberg ‘spent some
time in Merseyside in search of the Beatles’ aura’.28 There are several divergent views about
the seriousness of Ginsberg’s statement, from George Dowden’s belief that it was lightly
meant, perhaps referencing Jung’s idea of Liverpool as the ‘pool of life’, to Michael
Horovitz’s belief that Ginsberg was probably asked for a quotation by ‘one of the bevy of
media folk he attracted’.29 Warner devotes several pages to detailing the interpretations of
those who knew Ginsberg – indeed, many of these are recorded as being personal
communications with Warner himself30 – concluding his article with the speculation that ‘the
25
Philip Norman’s biography of John Lennon lists a mix of English and American early influences
(Lewis Carroll and the Goon Show; J. D. Salinger and Rebel Without a Cause; comics via both
Ronald Searle and James Thurber), but also notes that Stuart Sutcliffe introduced Lennon to two key
artistic movements: Dada and American Beat (Philip Norman, John Lennon: The Life [London:
HarperCollins, 2008], pp. 63-69, 135-6).
26
Warner states his intention is to ‘historically re-describe the Ginsberg stay from personal and
reported accounts, drawing on interviews, histories and biographies’, but I see the main focus of the
article as dissecting the above quotation. (Simon Warner, ‘Raising the Consciousness? Re-Visiting
Allen Ginsberg’s Liverpool Trip in 1965’, in Centre of the Creative Universe: Liverpool and the
Avant-Garde, ed. by Christopher Grunenberg and Robert Knifton [Liverpool: Liverpool University
Press, 2007], pp. 94-111, p. 96). The book was published to accompany the exhibition of the same
name at Tate Liverpool, 20 February to 9 September 2007.
27
Bowen, p. 67.
28
McGough, Said, p. 163-4.
29
Michael Horovitz, cited in Warner, ‘Raising the Consciousness?’, p. 105-6.
30
See Warner, ‘Raising the Consciousness?’, pp. 106-8.
64
consciousness most raised’ during this visit ‘may well have belonged to Ginsberg himself.’ 31
This was 1965, the Beatles had ‘broken’ America the previous year, and Liverpool was on
the world map. Indeed, Bowen quotes Barry Miles as saying that ‘Like anyone who was
anyone at the time, he [Ginsberg] also wanted to visit Liverpool.’32
The details of Ginsberg’s visit to Liverpool in the early summer of 1965 are not particularly
well documented. In fact, there is even some contention as to when the trip occurred. In a
footnote to his essay, Warner tells us that: ‘The precise days Allen Ginsberg spent in
Liverpool are a matter of some conjecture’,33 as all we have to date it are two letters home.
On 21st May 1965, Ginsberg wrote to his father, Louis Ginsberg, from London, saying that
he has been:
Traveling around countryside – spent this weekend at Newcastle & visited old poet
Basil Bunting & met a lot of longhaired young lads and their wives – England very
beautiful May sunshine.34
Then, on 1st June, he wrote to his father again from London: ‘I spent the last week in
Liverpool, where the Beatles come from, listening to new rock & roll groups – it’s a
jumping city like San Francisco’.35 The last week of May, therefore, seems to be the most
likely date for the visit.36
There are also different accounts of the logistics of the visit. Brian Patten recalls that Miles
telephoned him to organise the visit,37 and Pete Brown claims in his autobiography that ‘I
volunteered to take Ginsberg to Liverpool. He sat on the train, occasionally chanting and
playing his finger cymbals, eyeing up sailors bound for Cold War patrols.’38 There is similar
confusion over his sleeping arrangements, as Bowen tells us that Patten ‘had no room in his
31
Warner, ‘Raising the Consciousness?’, p. 108.
Barry Miles of Ginsberg, in Bowen, p. 62, my italics.
33
Warner, ‘Raising the Consciousness?’, p. 100n.
34
Allen Ginsberg, cited in Michael Schumacher, ed., Family Business: Selected Letters between a
father and son Allen and Louis Ginsberg (London: Bloomsbury, 1970), p. 234-5. The ‘longhaired
young lads’ he met included the poet Tom Pickard, founder of the Modern Tower group, who was
working alongside Basil Bunting in Newcastle.
35
Schumacher, p. 236.
36
Whilst Liverpool Special Collections and Archives holds many diaries and appointment books for
all three of the Merseybeat poets, the earlier years of the 1960s are less well represented in this regard.
This may have been because the poets were too busy enjoying themselves to record specific events, or
that at this early stage of their careers they had no reason to preserve diaries for posterity.
37
Patten may have been chosen as a point of contact because Robert Creeley had had a ‘good time’
when invited to stay with the Underdog editor in Liverpool previously – he read twice, once at the
university and once in the basement of Sampson and Barlow’s, where Patten was running a poetry
night, and enjoyed a similar sightseeing experience as Ginsberg (Interview with Brian Patten, April
2012).
38
Pete Brown, White Rooms and Imaginary Westerns: Ginsberg, Clapton and Cream - An Anarchic
Odyssey (London: JR Books, 2010), p. 72.
32
65
attic’,39 so asked Henri to host, whereas Patten says that ‘Allen stayed a few nights at 32
Canning Street, then down the road at 64’, Henri’s home. 40 Patten’s 2006 interview with
Warner also shows that Ginsberg did stay with him initially:
He stayed with me at 32 Canning Street in Toxteth, Liverpool 8, in an attic room I
shared with a student called Tim Dawson. Allen would sit in the box room, with a
skylight, sing his Buddhist chants and say his Buddhist mantras. He was a bit of a
showman. Tim and I were great fans but we were more fans of ‘Howl’ than all his
chanting and bell-tinkling! 41
Ginsberg did at some point in the week stay with Henri, and Henri, too, comments on his
chanting:
I woke up and heard this noise downstairs, so I went down – there was a sink on the
half-landing – and it was Allen washing the dishes and singing one of those
Buddhist chants to himself. It was really an amazing revelation – Allen Ginsberg
washing my dishes. 42
This incident is captured in Henri’s Autobiography in ‘Poem for summer 1967’ as ‘Allen
singing washing the morning dishes’ (A, 40). Since Ginsberg’s visit was in 1965, I would
suggest that Henri is using 1967 in the title to refer to the ‘Summer of Love’ of that year,
using this as synecdoche for the feel of the city in the 1960s, falling as it does in
Autobiography between ‘Part Three 1957-64’ and ‘Part Four Summer 1970’. 1967 was also
the year of the publication of The Liverpool Scene and The Mersey Sound, so holds personal
significance for Henri. Whatever the reason, an event from 1965 is brought into the
evocation of 1967.
The domesticity of the image is significant in the context of what we know of Ginsberg’s
trip. There was a reading, but it was unpublicised. It is yet another aspect of the visit which
is difficult to pin down. Bowen claims:
A ‘Ginsberg reading’ during his brief stay in Liverpool was a must. Sampson &
Barlow’s was defunct at the time, so another venue had to be found. Parry’s
Bookshop in Hardman Street next to The Philharmonic Hotel had a vacant room so
this was deemed the place. 43
The reference to a ‘vacant room’ is the most important phrase in this telling. It implies that it
was a more informal gathering than many of Ginsberg’s performances elsewhere. However,
Bowen’s naming of the venue as Parry’s is incorrect. This is, perhaps, partly because there is
39
Bowen, p. 62.
Interview with Brian Patten, April 2012.
41
Brian Patten, cited in Warner, ‘Raising the Consciousness?’, p. 100.
42
Adrian Henri of Ginsberg, in Bowen, p. 62.
43
Bowen, p. 63.
40
66
no record of the reading in surviving flyers or advertisements, but it is also indicative of the
casual attitude to the reading of both the locals and Ginsberg himself. Whilst Bowen says the
event was held in Parry’s bookshop, Patten recalls: ‘Allen didn’t want to read at the
university, he wanted to read at a small place and Charles Wilson’s bookshop in Renshaw
Street was small so we had it there.’44 Warner’s article places Wilson’s at the bottom of
Hardman Street (Renshaw Street and Hardman Street converge). Like Bowen and Patten,
Warner emphasises the theme of the relatively small gathering, quoting Patten: ‘It was a
very crowded reading in a very small space with about 50 people packed in. It was not really
well publicised but Allen was quite happy to do a little reading.’45
McGough and Henri, both of whom were in attendance alongside Patten, use similar
terminology to describe the reading. McGough, who simply says the reading was ‘at a small
bookshop in Hardman Street’, remembers it as ‘serene, intimate’.46 Similarly, for Henri:
It was one of the best poetry readings I’ve ever been to … he sat cross-legged and
just read and it was totally intimate and beautiful, and it just flowed out, not even
preaching, just talking to you, but talking like some sort of prophet. 47
Pete Brown had been asked to introduce Ginsberg, and to provide support to Ginsberg’s
headline act.48 Michael Horovitz may or may not have been asked to contribute: Henri’s
recollection of the evening is of Horovitz ‘totally monopolis[ing] the proceedings’,49
whereas Horovitz claims that both he and Brown had been asked to ‘provide substantial
support performances’.50 Either way, the recollections all agree on the simplicity and
intimacy of the event.
Post-performance, the evening continued at Fat Johnny’s, a West Indian drinking club off
Falkner Square, not far from Hardman Street, in Liverpool 8. Both Patten and Henri
comment on Ginsberg’s informal, friendly manner within the city. They went drinking in the
Phil and Ye Cracke and took him to the Cavern where he played Tibetan finger-cymbals. To
44
Interview with Brian Patten, April 2012.
Brian Patten, cited in Warner, ‘Raising the Consciousness?’, p. 100.
46
The quotation contrasts the Liverpool reading with the ‘rant in front of 7,000 at the Albert Hall’ in
June: ‘I decided his trick was not to grow into the size of the venue, but to reduce the capacity of the
hall to suit him.’ McGough, Said, p. 163. The fact that the poets remember it as a small bookshop
would point the location to Wilson’s rather than Parry’s. Another explanation for Bowen choosing
Parry’s is that the shop advertised in Underdog (for example, Underdog 6, Patten/6/1/1/6).
47
Bowen, p. 63.
48
Bowen says: ‘Pete Brown, who was in Liverpool at the time, agreed to introduce Ginsberg and read
briefly’ (Bowen, p. 63), whereas Brown, as quoted previously, claims that he was the one who
accompanied Ginsberg to Liverpool (Brown, p. 72).
49
Bowen, p. 63.
50
Warner, ‘Raising the Consciousness?’, p. 105.
45
67
Patten, recalling the visit forty years later, there was a consensus of feeling that ‘those who
knew him as a poet were delighted to have him around; others found him an interesting
character’.51 The ‘character’ is separated from the poet: McGough, interviewed in 2012, also
rejected ‘the bells and all that’ as ‘slightly off-putting’, rejecting that persona rather than the
works.52 These recollections indicate the ‘low-key’ nature of Ginsberg’s visit, but also lack
any sense of reverence. Henri’s recollections corroborate this:
Nobody knew who he was – you’d take him to the pub and Allen would talk to you
for five minutes then wander away and talk to lots of other people. The most
unlikely people were terribly impressed by him. 53
An extended version of this comment appears in Edward Lucie-Smith’s anthology The
Liverpool Scene, notable for its lack of reference to the poet and its focus on the man:
The great thing here was that nobody knew who he was – you take him to the pub
and all you get is these guys saying, ‘Who’s that funny fellow with you, the fellow
with the long hair?’ And Allen would just stand there and talk to you for five
minutes and just wander away and you’d see him talking to somebody and then he’d
wander off and talk to somebody else. And hundreds of people kept coming here for
weeks afterwards, saying ‘Hey, that American bloke with the long hair who was
with you – he’s gear, isn’t he?’ You know, all sorts and conditions of funny people
whom you wouldn’t expect were terribly impressed by him.
(TLS, 17)
Christopher T. George, a Liverpudlian now living in Baltimore, also emphasises this in his
poem ‘Allen Ginsberg in Liverpool’, a tribute to Henri written after his death in 2000.
George was not part of the scene in the 1960s, but his poem addresses Henri directly, using
Ginsberg’s visit as a way in to pay tribute to Henri himself:
Everyone thought him the gear
– the little Jew
with the long hair.
You said later, ‘He’d talk
to anyone. Anyone at all.’ 54
George links Ginsberg as ‘a new messiah’ to Henri’s own work:
You wanted to paint
‘The Arrival of Christ
51
Patten does go on to say that: ‘some of the young lads in the groups weren’t interested in poetry and
thought his Tibetan cymbals a bit of an affectation. Remember this wasn’t exactly the days of flower
power. The so-called summer of love was sometime off still’ (Interview with Brian Patten, April
2012).
52
Interview with Roger McGough, November 2012.
53
Adrian Henri of Ginsberg, in Bowen, p. 63.
54
For the full text, see http://chrisgeorge.netpublish.net/poems/allen-ginsberg-in-liverpool [accessed
6 February 2012]. First published in Electronic Acorn, 16 Sept 2004.
68
into Liverpool’ and here
was Allen Arrived 55
In the end, however, the poem’s emphasis falls on the place, rather than the person. Ginsberg
is in Liverpool, with Cousin’s bakery, the Mersey freighters, and The Phil. The poem’s final
lines act as a summary of the whole experience, moving immediately from global awareness
to the domesticity inherent in Henri’s own telling of Ginsberg washing up in Autobiography:
he regaled Liverpool
as the ‘Center
of the consciousness of the universe.’
Next morning, your cat meowed to be fed. 56
This discussion of, and quotation from, George’s poem serves to represent what I feel is the
most important aspect of the 1965 Ginsberg visit, one that has not been explored by critics:
what seems to have been the main focus of the trip is not Ginsberg himself, but rather
Liverpool. The visit was part of his world tour of that year – Cuba, Russia, Czechoslovakia,
England – but where other elements are well documented in the contemporaneous press
(such as Ginsberg’s election as the Prague King of May) and in later biographies, little
seems to have been written about the Liverpool visit: it has the status of an unplanned break.
In fact, it is with the Henri reference to Ginsberg ‘talking to anyone’ that Cook answers his
own question, ‘What sort of impact did Allen Ginsberg have on the places he visited?’57 This
emphasizes Ginsberg’s interest in meeting new people, not his reading or his literary impact.
This, to me, is crucial to any discussion of the Liverpool visit. Apart from the small reading,
Ginsberg was mainly interested in sightseeing and socialising, as the letter to his father
quoted previously highlights: Liverpool is ‘where the Beatles come from’, and he has spent
his time there ‘listening to new rock & roll groups’.58
Ginsberg had arrived in London after being deported from Czechoslovakia. His time in
Prague, being crowned King of May and then arrested by the police, is considered by critics
to be by far the most important event of the European trip: both Miles’s biography and I
Celebrate Myself, Bill Morgan’s chronologically detailed biography, devote a whole chapter
to the ‘King of May’. In contrast, Morgan sums up the Liverpool visit in two sentences: ‘He
also went to Liverpool to give a reading and listen to the new rock groups there. Liverpool
was the home of the Beatles and everything new and mad in electric music happened there
55
http://chrisgeorge.netpublish.net/poems/allen-ginsberg-in-liverpool [accessed 6 February 2012]
http://chrisgeorge.netpublish.net/poems/allen-ginsberg-in-liverpool [accessed 6 February 2012]
57
Cook, p. 153-4.
58
Allen Ginsberg, cited in Schumacher, p. 236.
56
69
first’,59 the biographer’s words echoing Ginsberg’s own in his letter to his father. Miles
states: ‘It was the first time Allen had been in Britain during the summer, and he took
advantage of the good weather to explore the country’, adding that he was ‘moved by the
new dancing and music’.60 Miles’s autobiography makes much of meeting Ginsberg in this
period and putting him up in London, but makes no mention of the Liverpool visit.61 Pete
Brown’s record of the visit serves as a summary of what most agree on:
In Liverpool, he met the triumvirate (Patten, Henri and McGough), read his poems
and chased the second generation of rock’n’rollers. I think he caught a couple. We
argued about the Beatles, who he predicted would change the world. 62
Music, people, and, yes, poetry, but Ginsberg-as-tourist rather than Ginsberg-as-performer.
The briefness of the accounts of contemporaries, such as Brown’s, shows how relatively
small-scale and social the visit was. Similarly, in ‘I Want to Paint’, Henri highlights the
social aspect of their visit as he sees ‘Me and Allen Ginsberg sitting in a summer park
painted by Henri Rousseau’ (TAN, 22).63 Whilst Henri often filled his poems with his heroes
(often in social or quotidian settings), the impression one gets is of an emphasis on
friendship rather than admiration. In fact, a photo (although obviously not taken by
Rousseau) of the two of them sitting in a summer park does exist, but this was taken during a
later visit.64
A common theme to these – very few – references to the 1965 visit is the new music
Liverpool was so famous for. Ginsberg was undoubtedly a fan of the Beatles. He had met
59
Bill Morgan, I Celebrate Myself: The Somewhat Private Life of Allen Ginsberg (London: Penguin,
2006), p. 410.
60
Barry Miles, Allen Ginsberg: a biography (London: Virgin Books, 2002), p. 366.
61
See Miles, Sixties, pp. 53-6. Miles’s autobiographies In the Sixties and In the Seventies are full of
encounters with artists and poets through Better Books and beyond, but make no mention of the
Merseybeat poets or of either of their 1967 publications. In fact, Miles’s only mention of the
Merseybeat poets is that Henri and Patten read at a Hyde Park rally to legalise pot in 1967, where ‘the
crowd was excitable and few people heard them’; this comment is included only to set the scene for
Ginsberg’s own arrival (Miles, Sixties, p. 220). In his biography of Ginsberg, Miles goes even further,
saying that ‘no one heard them’ at the event (Miles, Ginsberg, p. 392). Similarly, another Miles
history makes no mention of Ginsberg’s travels outside of London after being deported from
Czechoslovakia (Barry Miles, London Calling: A countercultural history of London since 1945
[London: Atlantic Books, 2010], p. 144). Whilst Miles’s writing about both his life and the lives of
others within the Beat Generation is invaluable, it is also typical of the London-centric criticism
which has often ignored literary happenings outside of the capital.
62
Brown, p. 72.
63
This line only appears in the Tonight at Noon version.
64
The photo appears in Centre of the Creative Universe, plate 8, p. 99, entitled ‘Adrian Henri and
Allen Ginsberg, Holland Park, London 1969’. It is this photo that Michael Kustow is describing
when, picking up on the characters or roles each poet plays, he writes: ‘He sits (in a painting, in a
film) in a bright green garden wearing a gold braided jacket talking to Allen Ginsberg. Friar Tuck
disguised as Sergeant Pepper meets the Baal Shem Tov disguised as Maharishi. William Blake (out of
frame) provides the sunshine for them both.’ (Michael Kustow, ‘Notations for an Audio-Visual
Album’, in Adrian Henri, Adrian Henri: painter/poet (London: Fanfare Press, 1968), n.p.
70
them soon after he arrived in London, at the after-party of Bob Dylan’s concert on 9th May
(before his visits to the North), and wanted them at his birthday party on 3 rd June.65 As well
as writing to his father, Ginsberg wrote to Peter Orlovsky on 25th May:
I spent all week in Liverpool home of The Beatles and heard all the new rock bands
and gave a little reading and had a ball with longhair boys – it’s like San Francisco
except the weather is greyer – lovely city, mad music, electronic hits your guts
centres. 66
In both letters home, we can see Ginsberg’s excitement over the music, and the Beatles
specifically, but there is another lure: the ‘longhair boys’, which feature in his letter home
about Newcastle, as well as in Lucie-Smith’s anthology, where the famous quotation is
followed immediately by this sentence: ‘They’re resurrecting the human form divine there –
all those beautiful youths with long, golden archangelic hair’ (TLS, 15). Ginsberg’s sexual
preferences are caught up in an almost Blakeian vision of English youth as angels (adding
Ginsberg-as-sexual-predator to the list above, also implied in Brown’s recollections).
William Blake was an important influence on Ginsberg, and one which the Merseybeat poets
would have been aware of. The Penguin Modern Poets volume from 1963 (referred to
earlier in this chapter) contains ‘Sunflower Sutra’, a poem clearly inspired by Blake and
Ginsberg’s vision of him in 1948. It is also informed by the clash of nature and industry
which is a common theme in Blake’s work, particularly in Songs of Innocence and
Experience (which Ginsberg would go on to record). Blake’s influence on Ginsberg has been
well-documented. Eric Mottram observed that Ginsberg’s ‘inspiration not only came through
Blake’s voice and the long-breathed lines of his Prophetic Books, but through an essential
sense of the poet as visionary bard.’67 In William Blake and the Moderns, Alicia Ostriker’s
essay ‘Blake, Ginsberg, Madness, and the Prophecy as Shaman’ discusses the idea of
Ginsberg as Blake’s disciple, as, she believes, this prophetic role ‘clearly forms the core of
Blake’s influence on Ginsberg, and he is the only one of Blake’s modern disciples who
publicly assumes such a mantle or burden.’68
65
‘Portland Coliseum’, ‘his Beatles poem’ (Miles, Ginsberg, p. 556), records a concert in the
eponymous Portland Coliseum, 22 August 1965. The second stanza records an ‘Apparition’ of ‘four
brown English/ jacket christhair boys’, who ‘all jump together to End/ some tearful memory song/
ancient two years’ (Allen Ginsberg, Collected Poems 1947-1985, 2nd. rev. edn. (London: Penguin,
1995), p. 365. Further references appear after quotations in the text as ‘GCP’. Ginsberg is in the
audience, possibly thinking of the first time he saw the Beatles (1963 would have been two years
before this, the year of the first Beatles’ album).
66
Allen Ginsberg, cited in Miles, Ginsberg, p. 361.
67
Ginsberg himself believed that the series was intended to be sung, and arranged and recorded an
album in 1969; Songs of Innocence and Experience by William Blake, tuned by Allen Ginsberg
(MGM Records, FTS3083, 1969).
68
Alicia Ostriker, ‘Blake, Ginsberg, Madness, and the Prophecy as Shaman’ in William Blake and the
Moderns, ed. by Robert J. Bertholf and Annette S. Levitt (Albany: State University of New York
71
As noted above, Ginsberg’s first vision of Blake occurred in 1948, recorded at length in
Miles’s biography: whilst lying on his bed that summer, reading Blake’s ‘Ah! Sun-flower’
from Songs of Innocence and Experience, ‘he heard a deep, ancient voice, reading the poem
aloud. He immediately knew, without thinking, that it was the voice of Blake himself,
coming to him across the vault of time’.69 Miles specifically refers to the voice as
‘prophetic’70 and that Ginsberg ‘suddenly had a deep understanding of the meaning of the
poem and realised that he was the sunflower.’71 In a Paris Review interview, discussing
Cezanne and Ginsberg’s interest in his petites sensations, he said:
The thing I understood from Blake was that it was possible to transmit a message
through time which could reach the enlightened, that poetry had a definite effect, it
wasn’t just pretty, or just beautiful, as I had understood pretty beauty before, it was
something basic to human existence, or it reached something, it reached the bottom
of human existence. 72
The feeling Ginsberg had when regarding Cezanne’s paintings was the same as that which
he had experienced during his Blake visions, and he wanted to explore how to reproduce that
feeling, as he writes in ‘Howl’:
Who dreamt and made incarnate gaps in Time & Space through images juxtaposed,
and trapped the archangel of the soul between 2 visual images and joined the
elemental verbs and set the noun and dash of consciousness together jumping with
sensation of Pater Omnipotens Aeterna Deus.
(GCP, 130)
This visionary sense of time and space was clearly important for Ginsberg as a disciple of
Blake.
Ginsberg’s own ‘Sunflower Sutra’ sees the poet walking ‘on the banks of the tincan banana
dock’, where he is ‘surrounded by the gnarled steel roots of trees of machinery’ and ‘oily
water on the river’ (GCP, 138). The paragraphic line which Ginsberg developed from his
readings of Blake is clear here.73 In this decayed industrial environment, using similar
Press, 1982), pp. 111-31, p. 113. This essay does not mention Michael Horovitz as another of Blake’s
‘modern disciples’, although Blake is a clear influence on him – see the brief discussion of the
Children of Albion anthology, edited by Horovitz, later in this chapter.
69
Miles, Ginsberg, p. 98.
70
Miles, Ginsberg, p. 98.
71
Miles, Ginsberg, p. 99.
72
Allen Ginsberg, ‘The Art of Poetry No. 8’, The Paris Review, 37 (1966), pp. 13-55, p. 24-5. I do
not have space to discuss this here, but for an in-depth exploration of Cezanne’s influence on
Ginsberg see Paul Portugés, ‘Allen Ginsberg’s Paul Cezanne and the Pater Omnipotens Aeterna
Deus’ in Contemporary Literature, 21 (Summer 1980), pp. 435-449.
73
See Eric Mottram, ‘American Poetry, Poetics and Poetic Movements since 1950’, in American
Literature Since 1900, ed. by Marcus Cunliffe, rev. edn. (London: Penguin, 1993), pp. 237-282, p.
270.
72
imagery to that of Blake’s Songs of Experience, the natural world seems to have been
displaced (‘no fish in that stream’) and there seems no possibility of transcendence (‘no
hermit in those mounts’) (GCP, 139). Then, ‘Look at the Sunflower, he [Jack Kerouac]
said’, and Ginsberg is transported back to his vision: ‘– I rushed up enchanted – it was my
first sunflower, memories of Blake – my visions’ (GCP, 139). The connection to Blake is
made explicit in this realisation as Ginsberg’s ‘I’ moves from the literal record of the day
seen in the first lines into a visionary state in response to the sunflower: ‘Unholy battered old
thing, you were, my sunflower O my soul’ (GCP, 139). In Ginsberg’s 1948 vision, he was
the sunflower, and at the end of the memory section in ‘Sunflower Sutra’ he remembers this
as he addresses the sunflower:
when did you forget you were a flower? when did you look at your skin and decide
you were an impotent dirty old locomotive? the ghost of a locomotive? the specter
and shade of a once powerful mad American locomotive?
You were never no locomotive, Sunflower, you were a sunflower!
(GCP, 140)
The locomotive represents his corrupted state, as opposed to the natural world, but is also
part of bringing the poem – and the poet – back to the supposed reality, as his opening line
tells the reader he is ‘sat down under the huge shade of a Southern Pacific locomotive’
(GCP, 139). In contrast, ‘A perfect excellent lovely sunflower’ (GCP, 139) is held up to
represent the possibilities of both Ginsberg and Kerouac’s souls at the end of the poem:
‘We’re not our skin of grime, we’re not dread bleak dusty imageless locomotives, we’re
golden sunflowers inside’ (GCP, 140).
Twenty years after the original vision, Ginsberg was still convinced that it was ‘the only
really genuine experience I feel I’ve had’74 and his poetry certainly shows his preoccupation
with the idea that Blake ‘had come forth with some little magic formula statement in rhyme
and rhythm that, if properly heard in the inner ear, would deliver you beyond the universe’.75
‘Vision 1948’ and ‘On Reading William Blake’s “The Sick Rose”’ record the actual
experience, and Miles records that Ginsberg’s unpublished manuscript and journal writings
also include many references to it, ‘including a 111-line poem about it, called “One Day”,
written in 1961’.76
A few weeks after his visit to Liverpool, Ginsberg performed at the Albert Hall, at the nowfamous International Poetry Incarnation on 11th June 1965. At the press conference before
the event, the poets read an ‘Invocation’ with clear Blakeian ties:
74
Allen Ginsberg, cited in Miles, Ginsberg, p. 103.
Allen Ginsberg, cited in Miles, Ginsberg, p. 100.
76
Miles, Ginsberg, p. 104.
75
73
England! Awake! Awake! Awake!
Jerusalem thy Sister calls!
And now the time returns again:
Our souls exult, & London’s towers
Receive the Lamb of God to dwell
In England’s green & pleasant bowers. 77
The explicit reference to ‘Jerusalem’ in the second line clearly links to Blake’s preface to
Milton (which is more commonly referred to as ‘Jerusalem’, and the hymn of the same
name, composed by Hubert Parry to Blake’s lines), and this link is continued: the ‘holy
Lamb of God’ is ‘On England’s pleasant pastures seen’, and ‘England’s green and pleasant
land’ ends Blake’s poem.78 ‘Jerusalem’ is a clear intertext in this opening section before the
poem’s exclaimed ‘invocations’. On this evidence, Blake was clearly relevant not only to
Ginsberg but to his English contemporaries. Indeed, Michael Horovitz named his anthology
of the British Underground ‘Children of Albion’, a clear Blakeian reference.79 In his
introduction to Wholly Communion, the book accompanying Peter Whitehead’s film of the
event, Alexis Lykiard says the ‘Invocation’ ‘spontaneously erupted’,80 but in the BBC2
documentary Days in the Life, those who were involved in setting up the event recall that a
group of the poets wrote the ‘Invocation’ in Alex Trocchi’s flat, the night before the Press
Conference.81 The ‘Invocation’ also included examples of Ginsberg’s technique (explained
in the Indian Journals) of combining two or more nouns into a phrase (‘hydrogen jukebox’
from ‘Howl’ being the first and most widely cited example of his attempts – inducing a
‘momentary gap in consciousness’82 as inspired by Cezanne and Blake), such as
‘Spontaneous planet-chant Carnival!’ and ‘immaculate supranational Poesy insemination!’.83
It also used the poem to advertise several avenues of dissemination for poetry at the time:
‘Sigmatic New Departures Residu of Better Books & Moving Times in obscenely New
Directions!’84
But before this, Ginsberg had been in Liverpool, finding Blake in a street in Everton.
77
Reproduced in Peter Whitehead, Wholly Communion (London: Lorrimer Films, 1965), p. 9.
William Blake, Complete Poems, 3rd. edn., ed. by W. H. Stevenson (Harlow: Longman, 2007), p.
503. Further references appear after quotations in the text as ‘BCP’.
79
The 1969 Penguin anthology also links the book very clearly to Blake by reproducing his own
painting of Albion on the cover.
80
Whitehead, p. 8.
81
Days in the Life: the gathering of the tribes, prod. by Jonathon Green (broadcast 2 December 2000,
BBC2) [accessed via the British Library Listening Service, V4648]. The group included Alex
Trocchi, Michael Horovitz, Pete Brown, and Allen Ginsberg.
82
Portugés, p. 436.
83
Whitehead, p. 9.
84
Whitehead, p. 9.
78
74
GINSBERG AND MRS. ALBION
Arthur Ballard, Henri’s then-employer at the Art College, took Ginsberg on a tour of the
city, including a visit to the cast-iron church of St. George’s, Everton, where, on the way
out, Ginsberg noticed Albion Street, which he took as ‘a Blakeian sort of sign’.85 This, in
turn, became the impetus for Henri’s poem ‘Mrs. Albion You’ve Got A Lovely Daughter’.
Peter Davies’s biography of Arthur Ballard makes no mention of the sightseeing tour for
which Ballard was the chauffeur. This tour may well have been deliberately ignored by
Davies, as throughout the biography he stresses the traditional attitude to painting which
Ballard favoured, not wanting to associate the man with the ‘kind of literary, theatrical or
illustrative influences’ of his staff such as Henri.86 Indeed, Davies is dismissive of Henri
throughout the book, calling him a ‘well-read “magpie”’,87 intending to trivialize Henri’s
multimedia and Pop Art leanings. However, it is this magpie nature – and ‘well-read’ could
hardly be an insult – that lies behind Henri’s works, be they paintings or poetry, and ‘Mrs.
Albion’ is no different.
David Bateman’s interview with Henri in Gladsongs and Gatherings, which discusses the
poem at some length, opens by declaring that:
Heavily inspired by New York Beat poet Allen Ginsberg, Adrian Henri brings home
William Blake’s vision of Albion: an England of heroic optimism as well as tedium
and hypocrisy, and where the mythical exists within the commonplace, just waiting
to be seen. 88
Whilst I disagree that Henri’s work is ‘heavily’ inspired by Ginsberg, the Blakeian
inspiration, via Ginsberg, can be clearly seen in this particular poem. The phrase ‘daughters
of Albion’ is a nod of acknowledgement to Visions of the Daughters of Albion, one of
Blake’s prophetic books, and the ‘daughters of Albion’ write graffiti about him (‘Billy Blake
is fab’), as if he were a rock star (TMS1, 55).89 In an interview published in 2001, Henri
states that ‘I actually recognised in Blake that there were these mythological giants, that the
Daughters of Albion were actually the four major rivers of the country.’90 The conceit of the
poem is that the Mersey is one of these major rivers, but also that Albion’s – England’s –
85
Henri, cited in Bateman, ‘Singer of Meat and Flowers’, p. 90.
Peter Davies, Arthur Ballard: Liverpool Artist & Teacher (Gwent: Old Bakehouse
Publications,1996), p. 77.
87
Davies, Ballard, p. 77.
88
Bateman, ‘Singer of Meat and Flowers’, p. 73.
89
The George poem quoted previously includes a common Liverpool graffito ‘King Billy is fab’. This
is a reference to the Protestant King William of Orange; Henri has appropriated it and transformed it
into a praise of Blake.
90
Adrian Henri, cited in Bateman, ‘Singer of Meat and Flowers’, p. 90-1.
86
75
‘most lovely daughter’ is the city of Liverpool itself. The opening lines of Visions of the
Daughters of Albion could certainly be read with reference to the Mersey and Liverpool:
‘Enslav’d, the Daughters of Albion weep; a trembling lamentation/ Upon their mountains; in
their valleys, sighs toward America’ (BCP, 181). Looking towards America is what
Liverpool as a port city does, and the opening of Henri’s poem echoes this as the ‘most
lovely daughter sat on the banks of the Mersey dangling her landing stage in the water’
(TMS1, 55). As the poem proceeds, however, the ‘daughters of Albion’ refer not to the city,
but to the city’s teenage daughters. Here we are faced with Henri’s own set of personal
motifs: ‘taking off their navyblue schooldrawers and/putting on nylon panties ready for the
night’ (TMS1, 55). The ‘navyblue schooldrawers’ are not only important as belonging to the
schoolgirls Henri so admired but also as introducing the first of a sequence of colours in the
poem, as their bodies are ‘pressed into dresses or sweaters/ lavender at The Cavern or pink at
The Sink’ (TMS1, 55), with assonance linking the colours of the clothes to the music venues.
Henri clearly takes inspiration from Ginsberg for this poem, but the significance is where he
deviates, where he takes it from there: we have come a long way from Ginsberg’s Blake.
Blake’s poem has links to the political theory of his time, and in particular Mary
Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, published the year before this, in
1792.91 Blake critiques the attitudes of the day, with Oothon lamenting the fact that men
have ‘enclos’d my infinite brain into a narrow circle’ (BCP, 185), demanding she adhere to
societal propriety in terms of her sexuality. Wollstonecraft’s treatise is a clear source for
Oothon’s speech calling on ‘Urizen, Creator of Men’, ‘How different their eye and ear! How
different the world to them!’ (BCP, 188), referring to the disparity between man and
woman’s experiences. The speech occurs after Oothon has been kidnapped and raped by
Bromion, and her original love, Theomorton, rejects her for no longer being pure, punishing
them both, leaving them ‘bound back to back in Bromion’s caves’ (BCP, 183).
Wollstonecraft and Blake’s critique of the rigidity of social codes, particularly in relation to
sexuality and marriage, are evident in the same speech, with Blake using the literal chains
Theomorton has bound Oothon with to represent marriage figuratively:
... she who burns with youth and knows no fixed lot, is bound
In spells of law to one she loathes. And must she drag the chain
Of life in weary lust?
(BCP, 189)
Instead, what Oothon wants is freedom: ‘I cry, Love! Love! Love! Happy, happy love, free
as the mountain wild!’ (BCP, 192). Henri’s ‘daughters of Albion’ (who, in Blake’s poem
have no role other than to ‘hear [Oothon’s] woes, and echo back her sighs’ [BCP, 184]) are
91
Blake also illustrated the second edition of Wollstonecraft’s Original Stories from Real Life (1971).
76
not bound by these codes, and are free to experience, in 1965, the realities of sexual
liberation; having previously been ‘wondering if tonight will be the night’, they are then
seen ‘worrying about what happened/ worrying about what hasn’t happened’ (the former
presumably related to them needing to explain ‘why they didn’t go home’, and the latter the
consequences of this in the failure to menstruate) (TMS1, 55). Read in the context of the
Blake poem, these elements of Henri’s work are pushed to the foreground: just as Oothon
describes herself in her defence as ‘a virgin fill’d with virgin fancies,/ Open to joy and to
delight wherever beauty appears’ (BCP, 191), so too are these schoolgirls, ‘lovin’ an’ alayin’’ with those ‘Beautiful boys with bright red guitars’ (TMS1, 56), enjoying the freedom
which Oothon did not have. However, these schoolgirls are also grounded in a particular
time and place: it is those guitars, in the Cavern, in 1965, which are central to this poem. The
poem is full of modern urban experiences:
The daughters of Albion
arriving by underground at Central Station
eating hot ecclescakes at the Pierhead
writing ‘Billy Blake is fab’ on a wall in Mathew Street.
(TMS1, 55)
Throughout the daughters are connected with local places: they arrive into the centre via
Central Station (which forms the hub of the Merseyrail network), they say goodnight in
Bebington (a small town in the Wirral), and relax in St. John’s Gardens (next to St. George’s
Hall in Liverpool City Centre), where they have ‘old men looking up their skirts’ (TMS1,
55). However, not only do these ‘daughters of Albion’ use the ‘underground’ and the
Mersey ‘dawn ferry’, they have ‘nylon panties’ and later ‘blue suspenderbelts’, and they
‘throw away their chewinggum ready for the goodnight kiss’ after a night out ‘pressed into
dresses or sweaters’ at the Cavern (TMS1, 55-6). Mrs Albion’s lovely daughter here is very
much of Henri’s time.
Henri’s poem carries the dedication ‘for Allen Ginsberg’ (TMS1, 55), but it is also a
specifically Liverpool-centred poem, and one which is full of Henri’s own obsessions:
popular culture, his love of Liverpool (and Liverpudlian girls), the urban landscape, and
much more. By listing modern material elements (such as those quoted in the previous
paragraph) Henri takes the poem away from Ginsberg’s idea of Blake’s Albion and into the
twentieth century. The title itself refers to the pop song ‘Mrs. Brown You’ve Got A Lovely
Daughter’, which would have been known by British audiences from the television play The
Lads in 1963, before being recorded by Herman’s Hermits. The song was a hit in the UK,
but in the April of 1965, just before Ginsberg came to Liverpool, the song had reached
77
number one in the U.S. Billboard.92 Music – and the scene in Liverpool at the time
associated with it – is important to the ‘daughters of Albion’, who are, as we have seen,
‘reelin’ an’ a-rockin’’ (TMS1, 56), evoking a Chuck Berry song,93 and wearing ‘lavender at
The Cavern or pink at The Sink’ (TMS1, 55), two of the most important music venues in
Liverpool at the time. In contrast to Blake and Ginsberg, there is no visionary element: the
poem remains grounded in contemporary urban life.
Thus, whilst the poem directly references Blake in its title and in the graffito ‘Billy Blake is
fab’ (TMS1, 55), as Henri himself says, it ‘doesn’t depend on the reference to Blake’. 94
Whilst Henri’s poem came from a prompt by Ginsberg, the final work itself is resolutely
Liverpudlian and Merseybeat.
GINSBERG’S POETIC INFLUENCE
‘Mrs Albion’ first appeared in print in Underdog 7 in 1965. Although the precise date of
publication is unknown, it must have been post-May, after Ginsberg’s visit. This volume
also contains two poems by Ginsberg, ‘Who Will Take Over The Universe?’ and ‘Paterson’.
The long line was certainly something the Merseybeat poets were aware of, from the City
Lights volume Howl and Other Poems, but ‘Paterson’ is an excellent example of not only
the long line but also the paragraphic prose line in Ginsberg’s work. The title recalls William
Carlos Williams’s work of the same name, while referencing Ginsberg’s childhood town in
New Jersey (a response to, and representation of, a particular space).
The placing of the two poems within the volume is also of note. First is ‘Who Will Take
Over the Universe?’, a poem exploring:
92
The Warner Guide to UK and US Hit Singles, compiled by Dave McAleer, rev. edn. (London:
Little, Brown, 1996), p. 368. Herman’s Hermits also starred in a 1968 comedy film of the same name.
The song itself addresses the mother of a girl who has recently broken up with the protagonist
(personified by the singer).
93
‘Reelin’ and Rockin’’ was released in January 1958 as the B-side to ‘Sweet Little Sixteen’. Each
verse ends with the line ‘We was reelin’ and a-rockin’, rollin’ till the break of dawn’. Chuck Berry
also performed at the Cavern, 27 February 1967 (Spencer Leigh, The Cavern: The Most Famous Club
In The World (London: SAF, 2008), p. 165). It is interesting to note here that the lyrics of ‘Sweet
Little Sixteen’ echo Henri’s own fascination about schoolgirls: ‘She’s got the grown up blues/ Tight
dress and lipstick, she’s sportin’ high heel shoes’, but ‘tomorrow morning, she’ll have to change her
trend/ And be sweet sixteen and back in class again.’
Both tracks appear on the remastered album Chuck Berry, Sweet Little Sixteen, prod. by Various
(Horizon, HZCD1001, 2006).
94
Adrian Henri, cited in Bateman, ‘Singer of Meat and Flowers’, p. 91.
78
The Revolution in America
already begun
not bombs, but sit
down strikes on top of submarines
In Greyhound buses, on the sidewalks
near the City Hall –
(Underdog 7, n.p.)
What is particularly interesting about the poems that Ginsberg submitted to Underdog is that
he gave Patten one new poem and one old poem, for both editions seven and eight. In this
way he could disseminate his new work (in this case ‘Who Will Take Over the Universe?’),
whilst also keeping older poems in circulation. This poem, clearly reworked after
publication in Underdog 7, appears, amended, in the Collected Poems with different line
breaks:
The Revolution in America
already begun not bombs but sit
down strikes on top submarines
on sidewalks nearby City Hall –
(GCP, 273)
The Underdog 7 version gives the impression that the ‘Revolution’ is everywhere, with the
list, preceded by a line break and a comma, of ‘on top of submarines/ In Greyhound buses,
on the sidewalks’ (Underdog 7, n.p.). The final published version is more compressed. In
both, the break of ‘sit/ down strikes’ emphasises the non-violent nature of the action.
The version of ‘Who Will Take Over the Universe?’ in Underdog 7 ends with the line
‘America’s spending money to overthrow the Man – ’, cutting off abruptly, and on the next
page, ‘Paterson’ begins with ‘What do I want in these rooms papered with visions of
money?/ How much can I make by cutting my hair?’ (Underdog 7, n.p.), with the repeated
word ‘money’ linking the two. In the version published in Ginsberg’s Collected Poems,
‘Who Will Take Over the Universe?’ ends by repeating the question implicit in the title:
‘Who are the rulers of the earth’ (GCP, 273). The poem has already provided the answer.
For example, the idea that one should: ‘Ignore the government,/ Send your protest to Clint
Murchison’ (GCP, 273) suggests that Murchison might have more power than the elected
government. This refers either to Murchison Senior, an oil magnate involved in the ‘hot oil’
trial of 1935, and a financier of the Republican party, or to his son, Murchison Junior, who
inherited his father’s business and used the wealth for various projects, such as founding the
Dallas Cowboys American Football team in 1960, and financing a pirate radio station, Radio
Nord. Later the poem refers to ‘The Ghost of John F. Dulles’ (GCP, 273), Eisenhower’s
Secretary of State and an influential figure in the Cold War (J. F. Dulles in the Underdog
version). His ‘Ghost’ ‘hangs/ over America like dirty linen’ (GCP, 273), referring to his
decisions early in the Cold War to adopt an aggressive stance against Communism, perhaps
79
causing more problems later for the present day (1961) Americans: ‘Fumes of Unconscious
Gas/ emanate from his corpse’ (GCP, 273). Other political figures included in the poem are
the revolutionaries Che Guevara and Fidel Castro, who are very much alive (‘Che Guevara
has a big cock/ Castro’s balls are pink’ [GCP, 273]) whilst the government, represented by
Dulles, is dead, although its corpse continues to contaminate.
‘Paterson’ is also a critique of contemporary American political reality, a rejection of the
‘rooms papered with visions of money’, listing instead a series of things he would rather do
than be involved with ‘the slobs and dumbbells of the ego with money and power’ (GCP,
40). The bodily and grotesque images of ‘Who Will Take Over the Universe?’ are raised
again in ‘Paterson’’s manifesto:
I would rather go mad, gone down the dark road to Mexico, heroin dripping in my
veins,
...
rather jar my body down the road, crying by a diner in the Western sun;
rather crawl on my naked belly over the tincans of Cincinnati;
rather drag a rotten railroad tie to a Golgotha in the Rockies;
rather, crowned with thorns in Galveston, nailed hand and foot in Los Angeles,
raised up to die in Denver,
pierced in the side in Chicago, perished and tombed in New Orleans and resurrected
in 1958 somewhere on Garret Mountain
(GCP, 40)
Ginsberg’s messiah complex is in evidence here: these lines clearly evoke Christ’s death and
resurrection, here played out across the entire United States.95 Ginsberg is also figured, from
the first-person stance of the poem, as standing alone against the government that he
attacked in ‘Who Will Take Over the Universe?’ – he is alone ‘screaming and dancing in
praise of Eternity annihilating the sidewalk, annihilating reality,/ screaming and dancing
against the orchestra in the destructible ballroom of the world’ (GCP, 40). The links between
the two poems are highlighted in Underdog 7 by the editorial decision mentioned above, to
place the two poems one after another in that issue. However, as mentioned above, quite
apart from these poems in Underdog, ‘Howl’ would also have been familiar to those
interested in poetry in Liverpool. The performance of ‘Howl’ at the Six Gallery in San
Francisco in October 1955 was undoubtedly an important moment. Whilst I do not have
space here to discuss the Six Gallery reading, the fact that Ginsberg subsequently recorded
the poem several times, and that the aural medium is one of the ways in which people at the
95
The Rocky Mountain range extends along the West coast of America from Canada down to New
Mexico; there are towns named Galveston in Texas (South) and Indiana (Mid East); Los Angeles,
California (South West coast); Denver almost certainly refers to Denver, Colorado (Mid West) where
the Beats spent some time (and which figures prominently in On the Road); Chicago, Illinois (North
East); New Orleans, Louisiana (South); and Garret Mountain, New Jersey (North East coast).
80
time received the work (as in the McGough quotation earlier), shows the necessity of
treating oral expression in Ginsberg’s work as vital to the experience. Indeed, Ginsberg
himself knew this, developing ways of intoning particular lines for the greatest effect – later
readings are not naturalistic speeches, but present ‘an exaggerated poetic form’,96 what
Patrick Dunn describes as ‘singsong’, with ‘iconic intonation.’97 He also described this first
public reading of ‘Howl’ as ‘like a jam session’, with Kerouac’s interjections after each long
line adding ‘a kind of extra bop humor to the whole thing’.98
The repeated ‘who’ opening each line in Part I of ‘Howl’ is particularly important in
performance, as the anaphoric structure serves as a defining beat in this long poem, bringing
the listener consistently and rhythmically back to the speaker, and to the ‘best minds of his
generation’ (GCP, 126) to whom he is referring. The ‘who’ is repeated fifty-nine times, and
gives a fixed point of return. It is also usually followed by an active verb, giving the poem a
constant sense of movement and of physical action. The ‘best minds’ are those ‘who bared’,
‘who cowered’, ‘who wandered’, ‘who jumped’, ‘who burned’, ‘who bit’, ‘who howled on
their knees’, who hiccupped’, ‘who wept’, ‘who coughed’, ‘who plunged’, ‘who fell on their
knees’, ‘who crashed’, and ‘who threw’, either watches or potato salad (GCP, 126-30). The
overwhelming sense of activity in the poem has a powerful effect on the reader, but
Ginsberg has also employed a range of rhetorical devices to build this even further. Take, for
example, ‘yacketayaaking screaming vomiting whispering facts and memories and
anecdotes and eyeball kicks and shocks of hospitals and jails and wars’ (GCP, 127). Here
the sense of movement is created by the repeated ‘ing’ ending of the verbs, followed by a list
punctuated by ‘and’ – here, depending on the performance, Ginsberg either speeds up the
pace or deliberately uses ‘and’ to highlight each new section, building up the tension by
accumulation through this connective. Thus, in the line: ‘who poverty and tatters and
hollow-eyed and high sat up smoking in the supernatural darkness of cold-water flats
floating across the tops of cities contemplating jazz’ (GCP, 126) recordings of the poem
usually show Ginsberg drawing out the vowel of ‘jazz’ after the fast-paced ‘and’ list, and
then diffusing the tension finally through his sibilance.99
96
Patrick Dunn, ‘“What If I Sang”: The Intonation of Allen Ginsberg’s Performances’, Style 41.1
(2007), pp. 75-93, p. 83.
97
Dunn, p. 83. Patrick Dunn’s essay discusses the variations in each different recording of ‘Howl’.
His work is inspired in part by Ann Wennerstrom, whose theories of the music of everyday speech
have made interesting background reading for my discussion of the Merseybeat movement’s
performative utterances. However, it is not within the bounds of this work to discuss Ginsberg’s
performances in more depth.
98
Jane Kramer, Allen Ginsberg in America, (New York: Random House, 1969), p. 48.
99
Such as the live recording from the Knitting Factory, New York, on The Allen Ginsberg Audio
Collection (Caedmon Records, UACD 5328[3], 2004).
81
There is also a dislocation of usual prose sentence construction here, leading to a
fundamentally image-based poem. The reader or listener receives phrases or lines as
individual images to process and connect or juxtapose with the next section, as Ginsberg’s
un-grammatical phrasings jolt the reader or listener into concentrating fully on the words and
their meaning. In ‘Notes on Painting and Poetry’, from Tonight at Noon, published in 1968,
Henri directly cites Ginsberg as one of the poets whom he admired, who used ‘a repeating or
running phrase to link an image-sequence’ (TAN, 71). He also observed that ‘the image that
follows must make the repeated word/phrase seem different each time, to avoid monotony’
(TAN, 71) – exactly what Ginsberg achieves in ‘Howl’ with the use of a ‘who’-plus-verb
structure. Henri goes on to say that he sees his own ‘Mrs Albion’ as a ‘modified example of
this procedure’ (TAN, 71). The anaphora which appears again and again in, for example,
Henri’s work in The Mersey Sound and The Liverpool Scene – ‘Without You’ and ‘Love Is’
being two of the most effective examples – is very much suited to oral expression, as the
strong beat of repetition brings the reader back to the central theme of each text.
Although I have emphasised oral performance here, the look of the work on the page is also
important. The first setting of ‘Howl’ in Howl and Other Poems was incorrect, the long lines
cut up by the printers: ‘His beloved work of art had turned into a typographical
nightmare.’100 It cost money to reset, but even though Ginsberg wrote to his brother Eugene
complaining ‘I hate to put out gold like that’,101 he still felt it necessary to do so. As he wrote
to Ferlinghetti, on 3rd July 1956, the paragraphic feel of the text was crucial to the
experience:
The one element of order and prearrangement I did pay care to was arrangement into
prose-paragraph strophes: each one definite unified long line. So any doubt about
irregularity of right hand margin will be sure to confuse critical reader about
intention of prosody. Therefore I’ve got to change it so it’s right. 102
In a letter to John Hollander in autumn 1958, Ginsberg explains that each line is ‘ONE
SPEECH BREATH’, ‘I literally measure each line by the physical breath’.103 This
foregrounds vocalisation, but also goes beyond this: ‘if you talk fast and excitedly you get
weird syntax & rhythms, just like you think, or nearer to what you think’.104 This, Ginsberg
says, is ‘sort of a search for the rhythm of the thoughts & their natural occurrence &
100
Raskin, p. 185.
Allen Ginsberg, cited in Raskin, p. 185.
102
Allen Ginsberg, cited in Morgan and Peters, p. 43.
103
Allen Ginsberg, cited in Kramer, p. 170-1. This is clearly influenced by Charles Olson’s
‘Projective Verse’, an essay published in 1950 and then subsequently much-quoted in William Carlos
Williams’s Autobiography the following year.
104
Allen Ginsberg, cited in Kramer, p. 171.
101
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spacings & notational paradigms.’105 It is the speed and compression of the thought process
that he is trying to achieve in print. In a conversation recorded in Composed on the Tongue,
Ginsberg states ‘my basic measure is a unit of thought’,106 and that this coincides with
‘natural speech pauses … the pauses and stops would fit if someone were in intimate
conversation’.107
A ‘stream of consciousness’ poetic is also present in Henri’s work, but this is used not as a
way of expressing the contents of the mind, as in Ginsberg, but rather as a score for
performance. In The Liverpool Scene, a volume containing much of Henri’s early work
written around the time of Ginsberg’s visit, there are several poems in which the ‘rhythm of
the thoughts’ is clear – such as the use of short pause caesuras and ellipsis, the paragraphic
line, the present tense, and the juxtaposition of image and thoughts in ‘Liverpool 8’:
The cathedral which dominates our lives, pink at dawn and grey at sunset… The
cathedral towering over the houses my friends live in…
Beautiful reddish purplish bricks walls, pavements with cracked flags where
children play hopscotch, the numbers ascending in silent sequence in the mist next
morning… Streets where you play out after tea… Back doors and walls with names,
hearts, kisses scrawled or painted…
(TLS, 13)
Here it is a social space which Henri is conjuring up through a ‘stream of consciousness’
listing of images. The focus on performance and communication in Henri’s work takes
Ginsberg’s ideas about ‘natural speech’ and turns them into a way of connecting with his
audience, making that ‘intimate conversation’ public and performative rather than private
and contemplative.
There are no letters in the Archives between Ginsberg and Henri, though we know that
Henri was his main guide around Liverpool.108 A notebook from early 1967 has a page of
seven questions for a ‘Ginsberg interview’, including notes from ‘1. Symbol to 2
generations. Also most (destructively) influential poet since Eliot’, to ‘7. Travel: how
necessary?’ (see fig 2.2).109 These two questions in particular show a resistance to Ginsberg’s
105
Allen Ginsberg, cited in Kramer, p. 173.
Allen Ginsberg, Composed on the Tongue: Literary Conversations, 1967-1977, ed. by Donald
Allen (San Francisco: Grey Fox, 1980), p. 21.
107
Ginsberg, Composed, p. 19.
108
Whilst all three poets say ‘we’ when referring to various aspects of Ginsberg’s visit, such as
Patten’s comments about going drinking together (Warner, ‘Raising the Consciousness?’, p. 105), this
gives a misleading sense of collective experience. It is clear that the day’s sightseeing tour which
prompted ‘Mrs. Albion’ was undertaken by Ballard, Henri, and Ginsberg. There is also evidence, as I
have suggested, for Ginsberg staying with Henri in Canning Street.
109
The list reads as follows:
106
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influence: the idea of Ginsberg being ‘destructive’ is interesting, showing that Henri felt, just
like McGough, that too much influence by another poet can be detrimental to one’s own
poetic.110 The comment about travel is particularly significant for what we know of Henri
personally, that he was the only one of the three Merseybeat poets who stayed in Liverpool.
By contrast, travel for Ginsberg was particularly relevant when one considers the timing of
this question: as noted earlier, the visit in 1965 when Henri and Ginsberg met was part of
Ginsberg’s ‘world tour’, and once he returned to America he would write The Fall of
America, a sequence of poems dated 1965-1971, exploring the Mid West and criss-crossing
back and forth across the continent – thus the ‘necessity’ of travel for the American poet
becomes obvious both in his life and his poetics, whereas the opposite is the case with Henri.
Henri also has notes reading ‘Poetics – breath as measure etc.’ and ‘Impulses (breath)’ (fig
2.2), which give clues as to what Henri was interested by in Ginsberg’s work; in particular,
how he moves off the page into performance. Henri’s ‘Notes on Painting and Poetry’
explains his position, worth quoting here in full:
Charles Olson’s celebrated essay Projective Verse can be read as a call to purify
one’s own dialect. The whole concept of writing for your own breath-and-speech
measure is obviously conditioned by the kind of speech you hear around you from
birth. This is what makes English ‘beat’ poets so hopeless: there are dozens of them
still publishing in mimeographed magazines the same old poems written in MockAmerican. They follow the manner, not the spirit of the Americans. The great postwar revolution in American poetry consisted of writers like Kerouac and Ginsberg
developing a new poetics and prosody by discovering their own voice, and
recognising this quality in the practise of older writers like Charles Olson and
William Carlos Williams. But Williams’ voice is not like Ginsberg’s voice, nor like
Creeley’s. And so a writer living in Liverpool and writing for his own voice and
breath-measure will obviously be very different again.
(TAN, 77)
The ‘breath-and-speech measure’ is particularly relevant for a poet for whom performance
was so important. It was especially important in the summer of 1967, when this interview
preparation was taking place, as the two print publications featuring the Merseybeat poets
had just come out, as well as The Incredible New Liverpool Scene LP, and Merseybeat was
‘Ginsberg Interview
Symbol to 2 generations. Also most (destructively) influential poet since Eliot. Significance
realized by governments e.g. Czechoslovakia, etc. How does this affect him?
‘Liverpool’ quote. Ask to explain about beat – has he changed his ideas?
Poetics – breath as measure etc.
Live poems devices to attain ecstasy.
Impulses (breath)
England – misinterpretation as social protest – meaning as art Pop Art.
Travel: how necessary?’
In terms of dating these pages of the notebook, a list of ‘things to do 2.vii.67’ appears four pages
before the pages referring to Ginsberg.
110
See his dislike of the Beat imitations of his Liverpool contemporaries, quoted at the end of Chapter
One and the beginning of this chapter.
84
propelled into the national consciousness, followed swiftly by bookings for performances on
rather larger stages than the poets had been used to at clubs and pubs in Liverpool.
Two pages later in this particular notebook there is a page titled ‘Alan: Quotes’ (fig 2.3) –
including part of the famous Liverpool quotation ‘the centre of the consciousness of the
human universe’. Before this, however, appears two comments: ‘interested in states of
altered perception, altered consciousness, deepened feeling’ and ‘let the mind supply the
language’. The first clearly relates to the effects of drug-taking and drug-taking as a way of
exploring ‘states of altered perception’, which was part of the Beat programme (one of the
meanings behind the idea of ‘openess’ included in the definitions of ‘Beat’ in the Friction
and New York Times Magazine articles quoted at the beginning of this chapter). The second
comment in Henri’s notebook refers to Ginsberg’s injunction to ‘trust the mind’: ‘talk as you
think’.111 Language is clearly a focus of concern, as Henri’s comment ‘Wychita [sic] V.S. –
language the subject?’ highlights this as a topic for discussion.
‘Wichita Vortex Sutra’ is one of the poems included in The Fall of America, an antiVietnam War poem composed by Ginsberg as he travelled. Writing about the composition
process, Ginsberg states that the lines are arranged ‘according to their organic time-spacing
as per the mind’s coming up with the phrases and the mouth pronouncing them.’ 112 This
emphasises Ginsberg’s trusting in ‘the mind’ to provide the form, but it also foregrounds
language itself as the medium, the vocalisation of the words and the spaces between them.
The technological aspect of composition is also represented in the printed text:
When transcribing, I pay attention to the clicking on and off of the machine [the
hand-held tape recorder], which is literally the pauses ... And then, having paid
attention to the clicks, arrange the phrasings on the page visually, as somewhat the
equivalent of how they arrive in the mind and how they’re vocalized on the tape
recorder.113
Another important aspect of the poem’s engagement with language is the inclusion of
advertisements, roadsigns, and various reports (newspaper and radio) which Ginsberg read
as he travelled, and read out into his tape recorder. Henri also used ‘found words’ in his
work, especially in his paintings or ‘works on canvas’.114 Ginsberg opens the poem with just
such an announcement, segueing into his own description of the town cited:
111
Ginsberg, Composed, p. 40.
Ginsberg, Composed, p. 29.
113
Ginsberg, Composed, p. 29.
114
‘The Entry of Christ Into Liverpool’ is just one example, poem and painting, where, as the
procession moves through Liverpool, the reader encounters the various hoardings and street graffiti in
the path. This piece is discussed at length in chapters Four and Five.
112
85
Turn Right Next Corner
The Biggest Little Town in Kansas
Macpherson
Red sun setting flat plains west streaked
with gauzy veils, chimney mist spread
around Christmas-tree-bulbed-refineries ...
(GCP, 394)
Two stanzas on, he returns to Macpherson as a venue, playing with the name of the town and
his own entry with ‘PERSON appearing in Kansas!’ (GCP, 395). The poem starts with
Ginsberg’s entry into the town, with the Vietnam War element becoming explicit later:
‘What if I sang till Students knew I was free/ of Vietnam, trousers, free of my own meat’
(GCP, 397).
The simple reportage and inclusion of ‘found’ language which appears throughout The Fall
of America becomes sinister in this poem, with direct quotations from the media presented
on the page as prose to emphasise their source:
Kansas City Times 2/14/66: ‘Word reached U.S. authorities that Thailand’s leaders
feared that in Honolulu Johnson might have tried to persuade South Vietnam’s
rulers to ease their stand against negotiating with the Viet Cong. American officials
said these fears were groundless and Humphrey was telling the Thais so.’
(GCP, 400)
In a passage full of figures and percentages Ginsberg undermines the government’s media
presence:
McNamara made a ‘bad guess’
‘Bad Guess?’ chorused the Reporters.
Yes, no more than a Bad Guess, in 1962
‘8000 American Troops handle the Situation’
Bad Guess
(GCP, 398)
The ‘bad guess’ of Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara comes from ‘[Senator] Aiken
Republican on the radio’ (GCP, 398), who apparently claimed that McNamara’s prediction
of the war (sanitised here by his choice of the word ‘situation’) needing only 8000 troops
was ‘no more than a bad guess’.115 The ‘bad guess’ is repeated not only four times in five
lines here, but also again twice more in this section, culminating in ‘the latest quotation in
the human meat market –/ Father I cannot tell a lie!’ (GCP, 399), evoking the Stock
Exchange and George Washington’s famous words to further indict the US government and
the media front.
115
Paul Carroll, ‘“I Lift My Voice Aloud,/ Make Mantra of American Language Now…/ I Here
Declare the End of the War”’, in On the Poetry of Allen Ginsberg, ed. by Lewis Hyde (Ann Arbor:
The University of Michigan Press, 1984), pp. 292-313, p. 295.
86
Language is clearly confronted as the main vehicle of political propaganda in this poem:
The war is language,
language abused
for Advertisement,
language used
like magic for power on the planet
Black Magic language,
formulas for reality
(GCP, 401)
The ‘Black Magic language’ already mentioned is joined by advertisements such as ‘you’re
the Pepsi Generation’ (GCP, 398), a phrase written on recruiting billboards. Cynical
instructions from Ginsberg to ‘put it this way’, for the newspapers to spin (to use our
contemporary language) the facts, such as ‘Lincoln Nebraska morning Star –/ Vietnam War
Brings Prosperity’ (GCP, 399) lambasts early media management of the war. How to
reclaim language is Ginsberg’s goal:
I search for the language
that is also yours –
almost all our language has been taxed by war.
(GCP, 406)
The titular ‘sutra’ shows Ginsberg’s intention of forming a new line of thinking, reclaiming
‘our’ language via transcendence, and turning this language into an anti-war mantra. Instead
of ‘Headline language poetry’ (GCP, 400), language could be used to stop the war. He starts
by calling ‘all Powers of imagination/ to my side’ (GCP, 406), invoking various holy men
and deities (and William Blake), asking them to ‘Come to my lone presence/ into this Vortex
named Kansas’ (GCP, 407). He then intones the mantra itself, aiming to create a mantra
which by its very force could affect reality:
I lift my voice aloud,
make mantra of American language now,
I here declare the end of the war!
(GCP, 407)
This is the central problem with which Ginsberg is wrestling here: what can poetic language
achieve, but it is also what he can make it achieve. It is ‘my lone presence’ and ‘my voice’
here, and a few lines later he tells us again: ‘this act done by my own voice’ (GCP, 407),
emphasising his role and his language. In his discussion of this poem in Lewis Hyde’s
volume of essays On the Poetry of Allen Ginsberg, Paul Carroll cites his correspondence
with Ginsberg, presenting Ginsberg as a ‘priestly legislator’116 in the manner of Shelley, and
arguing that the ‘Wichita Vortex Sutra’ mantra is an example of how poets are the
unacknowledged legislators of the world. He quotes Ginsberg as saying in response that ‘the
116
Carroll, in Hyde, p. 292.
87
war has been created by language… & Poet can dismantle the language consciousness
conditioned to war reflexes by setting up (mantra) absolute contrary field of will expressed
in language’.117 It is telling that Ginsberg uses ‘Poet’ singular, highlighting the fact that the
mantra created in ‘Wichita Vortex Surtra’ is spoken by one man, even if it is made
accessible by the fact of being ‘American language now’ (GCP, 407, my emphasis). The
politics of the poem are based not on a collective political organisation but a shamanic act.
Later in the poem, Ginsberg envisions:
The War is gone,
Language emerging on the motel news stand,
the right magic
Formula, the language known
in the back of the mind before, now in black print
daily consciousness
(GCP, 408)
This section (after the mantra has been created) seeks to oppose the language of the opening,
of what Carroll refers to as ‘the false and evil use of the American language’.118 However,
this section is also embedded in newspaper (and therefore propaganda) language – the ‘black
print’ is followed, later in the stanza, by the phrase ‘Continued from page one’ (GCP, 408),
as if Ginsberg is reading directly from an article, showing how deeply ingrained these forms
of language are. Furthermore, he returns to the reportage and ‘found’ language of the
opening section of the poem, continuing the catalogue of his journey: ‘Cloverleaf, Merging
Trffic East Wichita turnoff’, with ‘Lights rising in the suburbs/ Supermarket Texaco
brilliance’ (GCP, 410). Ginsberg ends the poem with these lines:
The war is over now –
Except for the souls
held prisoner in Niggertown
still pining for love of your tender white bodies O children of Wichita!
(GCP, 411)
The war, the Vietnam War, is not over.119 Ginsberg has not been able to end it merely by
wishing it so. Neither is the war for language over. The line break here is crucial, as the final
dash pushes the reader on to the next line where the truth is that there are still ‘souls/ held
prisoner’, rather than free for thought-expression (and sexual engagement), as Ginsberg
wanted. Furthermore, that the souls are ‘held prisoner in Niggertown’ reminds the reader
that even when the Vietnam War is over there will still be a war against segregation and
discrimination against racial minorities to fight.
117
Allen Ginsberg, cited in Carroll, in Hyde, p. 294.
Carroll, in Hyde, p. 295.
119
Ginsberg wrote the poem in February 1966, and the Vietnam War did not end until April 1975.
118
88
In Composed on the Tongue, Ginsberg states that he aimed to ‘set up a force field of
language which is so solid and absolute as a statement and a realization of an assertion by
my will’ that it would counteract the pronouncements of the State Department. By making
‘my language identical with the historical event’ he could bring about end of the war, but
‘the point is, how strong is my word?’120 The mantra has failed, in part, because ‘American
language now’ was not good enough. He goes on to quote Shelley (as Carroll did in this
context), saying that ‘the poet’s word is the strongest’.121 But ultimately, the poet’s word and
desire is not aligned with the words and desires of others: whilst he does say ‘our language
has been taxed by war’ (GCP, 406, my emphasis), it is only ‘I here declare the end of the
war!’ (GCP, 407, my emphasis) so his will for the end of the war will not prevail (at the time
of the writing of the mantra, and the poem) because it does not come from or affect the
majority consciousness – it is only his voice proclaiming the mantra.122
It is unclear whether Henri’s interview with Ginsberg was ever conducted, but, if it were, no
transcript has survived. Henri’s comments, however, reveal his readings of Ginsberg and
what he took from him. Similarly, what is obvious from Patten’s selections for Underdog is
what Ginsberg meant to him.123 This, namely, is America. In the first place, American
politics and Ginsberg’s visionary responses to US realities, and in the second place its ‘cool’
lifestyle – Underdog 8, in 1966, includes ‘In Society’ and ‘Note Poem’, both about
socialising. Patten’s editorial decision to include the latter two poems, and in the same
volume, presents Ginsberg and his poetry in a very specific light to the audience.
‘In Society’, with the epigraph ‘Dream 1947’ in the Underdog version (in the Collected
Poems this is expanded to ‘Dream New York – Denver, Spring 1947, and is the first poem in
the collection), states in the opening line it is about a ‘cocktail party’, setting up the mood to
be shattered. The authorial ‘I’ is presented throughout. ‘I was/ offered refreshments, which I
accepted’ sets up the first shock of the poem, as the refreshment is:
a sandwich of pure meat: an
enormous sandwich of human flesh,
120
Ginsberg, Composed, p. 47.
Ginsberg, Composed, p. 47.
122
Ginsberg was very active in peace protests and other countercultural causes. Public opinion about
the War in Vietnam did in part change over the course of the 1960s because of such groups, with exVietnam Veterans speaking out. Thus, we could say that the majority consciousness Ginsberg was
trying in reach in this poem, did, in reality, affect the end of the War.
123
Indeed, Patten was aware of what he was doing, as a note he wrote to himself shows. A
handwritten ‘advice sheet’ for making a magazine (‘If 28 pages, inc. covers, then 20 pages of poems,
no more than one poem per poet unless very short’), lists a number of poets, then at the bottom Patten
has written: ‘Allen Ginsberg: I have poem seek other opinions first’ (Patten/1/1/3/40/8).
121
89
I noticed, while I was chewing on it,
it also included a dirty asshole.
(Underdog 8, n.p.)
The poem is a simple anecdotal record of a dream, using a first person narrative. The ending
of this poem is also interesting:
‘Why you narcissistic bitch! How
can you decide when you don’t even
know me,’ I continued in a violent
and messianic voice, inspired at
last, dominating the whole room.
(Underdog 8, n.p.)
Whilst there is a comic element to this, the fact remains that ‘Ginsberg as messiah’ would
have been understood by his readers – he presented, after the ‘Howl’ obscenity trial, and his
increasingly vocal political statements, a shorthand for the counter-cultural movement, an
image of the alternative. For Eric Mottram, in Allen Ginsberg in the Sixties, this period is
about ‘power and paranoia’,124 with Ginsberg railing against society. Specifically, state
power and political paranoia, as in ‘Wichita Vortex Sutra’, is an important issue for
Ginsberg at this time, for raising awareness. Mottram argues that: ‘Ginsberg wants to
dominate the room but only for a purpose: the expansion and regeneration of mutual
consciousness.’125 However, I would argue that Ginsberg’s misogyny is also at work – the
woman is specifically a ‘fluffy female’ and a ‘bitch’ – and the attack of ‘In Society’ is much
more localised and personal than the attacks on the state in other poems discussed here.
In ‘Note Poem’, the reader of Underdog is presented with another party. In Patten’s
submissions folder for this volume, the manuscript copy of ‘Note Poem’ is a single sheet, the
text of the poem typewritten, with significant red pencil additions; the title ‘here note poem’
is crossed out, with ‘Note Poem’ written above it, and the contextualising quotation is also
struck through: ‘writ at country house of novelist Ken Kesey everyone high on LSD & DMT
big party with mototcycle [sic] gang Hell’s Angels’ (Patten/1/1/1/3/28). There is also a postit note attached to this sheet, added presumably when Patten was organising his files for
inclusion in the archive, which reads ‘As sent me for Underdog by AG’ (fig 2.4). It is not
clear if the red pencil comes from Ginsberg before hand-over, or from Patten as notes to the
printer.126 However, the exclusion of the quotation removes certain aspects, and what the
reader of Underdog receives is not, therefore, ‘First Party at Ken Kesey’s with Hell’s
Angels’, which is the title in Ginsberg’s Collected Poems, but the anonymised ‘Note Poem’,
lacking specificity. Without the publication title or the contextualising quotation, there is no
124
Eric Mottram, Allen Ginsberg in the Sixties (Brighton: Unicorn, 1972), p. 6.
Mottram, Sixties, p. 6.
126
Patten himself cannot remember the specifics, but says that the poems were sent to him by airmail
after the 1965 visit (Interview with Brian Patten, April 2012).
125
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anticipation of violence from the Hell’s Angels (linked to the presence of the police) to be
dispelled by the lack of violence in the poem, or the LSD association of Kesey himself (or,
indeed, what first party implies, of there being more to come).127
In It Was Twenty Years Ago Today, Derek Taylor highlights the drug connection, segueing
straight from a discussion of the Hell’s Angels who ‘took the acid that would change them
and become as little children’ (removing the violent element often associated with the gang)
to ‘Allen Ginsberg wrote a poem’, and quoting it in full.128 The allusion Taylor makes to the
Hell’s Angels ‘becom[ing] as little children’ is a reference from Matthew 18:3: ‘And said,
Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not
enter into the kingdom of heaven.’ The poem registers a 1960s faith in communal drugtaking as a path to a better society (here, as elsewhere, conceived as a taming of Hell’s
Angels). This also links to the Beat movement’s explorations of drug-taking as a way of
better accessing one’s consciousness and reaching a higher truth – Ginsberg was, for
example, involved with Timothy Leary and his LSD experiments.129
What we have in ‘Note Poem’, in contrast to ‘In Society’ and the ‘cocktail party’, is a ‘house
party’ in the woods:
3AM and the blast of loudspeakers
hi-fi Rolling Stones Ray Charles Beatles
Jumping Joe Jackson and twenty youths
dancing to the vibrations through the floor.
(Underdog 8, n.p.)
Outside the house, all is calm; it is a ‘cool black night’, the cars are parked in the ‘shade’
from the ‘stars dim above’ (Underdog 8, n.p.). Inside, the movement implied by the dancing
is later joined by the action of beer cans ‘littering’ the yard, building up a picture of these
‘sweating dancing’ youths (Underdog 8, n.p.). The ‘scarlet/ tights’ of one party-goer are
echoed in the last line of the poem where, bringing it all back to reality, ‘4 police cars’
parked symbolically outside the gate, have their ‘red lights revolving in the leaves’
(Underdog 8, n.p.). What here is mostly innocent lacks the implicit threats of other
published versions (with their reference to Hell’s Angels), and perhaps links more closely to
the lifestyles of its readers in Liverpool – particularly the opposition of party-goers and the
police, of pleasure being subject to constraint. This poem is also very different to the other
Ginsberg poem in the issue, it has an objective presentation of details, without a first person
narrator, and a paratactic basis.
127
The actual events of this party are recorded in Miles, Ginsberg, p. 475.
Derek Taylor, It Was Twenty Years Ago Today (London: Transworld Publishers, 1987), p. 105.
129
See, for example, Timothy Leary, Ralph Metzner, and Richard Alpert, The Psychedelic
Experience: a manual based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead (New York: University Editions, 1964).
128
91
After the Liverpool visit in May 1965, Ginsberg continued to communicate with Patten. He
also wrote the back cover blurb for Patten’s first solo collection, Little Johnny’s Confession.
The Liverpool Archives include a biographical note from 1966 describing Patten as ‘editor
of tiny demonic Underdog’, ‘finely devising his own education at the Sink/ the Cavern the
Philharmonic & nearby beds and bookstores’ (fig 2.5).130 Ginsberg certainly felt comfortable
writing to Patten in March 1967 for help locating a friend of his ‘girlfriend and guru’
Maretta, as ‘I thought you or Adrian Henri might know of him’.131 The letter goes on to ask
Patten to look after Maretta ‘if she shows up there’, signing off with a postscript telling him:
‘I’ll be in England in July so maybe see you then, Love, as ever, Allen Ginsberg’.132 Within
the archive, the next recorded letter from Ginsberg is in July 1972 (replying to Patten’s of
that February), five years later. This is a letter between equals. Ginsberg offers Patten advice
about his agent – which shows Ginsberg recognises Patten as a fellow professional poet –
and (perhaps as a postscript, written along the left hand edge of the letter) tells him of his
work, ‘improvising Blues 3 chords C F G, or G C D etc.’, and signs off with ‘Hope to see
you here love Allen’.133
Aside from the two brief letters, the only record in Ginsberg’s own words of the Liverpool
visit is in ‘Who Be Kind To’, addressed, at least in part, to the poet Harry Fainlight, and
written, according to Miles, three days before the Albert Hall reading where it had its first
performance.134 ‘Who Be Kind To’ references the London visit, specifically in terms of
connection, and the need for physical contact:
For this is the joy to be born, the kindness
received thru strange eyeglasses on
a bus thru Kensington,
the finger touch of the Londoner on your thumb,
that borrows light from your cigarette
(GCP, 360)
A few lines further into the poem, the Liverpool visit is mentioned. Where the previous
section foregrounds touch, the sense emphasised here is sound:
130
Letter from Ginsberg to Patten, 8 April 1966, Patten/3/1/5/1. Ginsberg has written on the bottom of
this typed page: ‘Brian – Change 19 above to any age you want, I first wrote equivalent of my own
reflections’, intending Patten to reuse his words.
131
Letter from Ginsberg to Patten, 5 March 1967, Patten/3/1/5/2.
132
He did return to Liverpool, but not until 1984 – Ginsberg records it in his ‘Chronological
Addenda’ with one word ‘Liverpool’: ‘One World Poetry Brussels visit; Liverpool; poetry reunion
Albert Hall, London, with Basil Bunting, Tom Pickard, Gregory Corso.’ (Ginsberg, Selected Essays,
198). The Liverpool Archives have nothing on record in the poets’ papers about this.
133
Letter from Ginsberg to Patten, 2 July 1972, Patten/3/1/5/3.
134
Miles, Sixties, p. 61.
92
the boom boom that bounces in the joyful
bowels as the Liverpool Minstrels of
CavernSink
raise up their joyful voices and guitars
in electric Afric hurrah
for Jerusalem –
The saints come marching in, Twist &
Shout, and Gates of Eden are named
In Albion again
(GCP, 360)
Ginsberg repeats ‘joyful’ here twice to emphasise the emotion, which is then linked to
religious fervour at ‘raise up’, the ‘saints’, and ‘Jersusalem’, the latter an allusion to Blake,
alongside the ‘Gates of Eden’ and ‘Albion’.135 As well as the ‘Liverpool Minstrels of/
CavernSink’ (eliding the two into one venue) with ‘guitars/ in electric Afric hurrah’, he also
includes the song ‘Twist & Shout’, which was a hit in 1962 for the Isley Brothers and
subsequently (and more importantly) appeared on the Beatles’ first album Please Please Me
the following year.136 Thus, within a few short lines Ginsberg manages to encapsulate his
Liverpool experience. That ‘Liverpool Minstrels’ are raising ‘their joyful voices and guitars/
in electric Afric hurrah for Jerusalem’ links the two sides of the Atlantic; ‘electric Afric’
implies the debt that current popular music owes to Blues music, while ‘Jerusalem’ records
that Blakeian visionary aspect that Henri responded to in ‘Mrs. Albion’. The links across the
Atlantic between England, Africa, and America also evoke the ‘triangular trade’, mentioned
in the first chapter, upon which Liverpool’s nineteenth century fortune was based.
The reference to Albion in ‘Who Be Kind To’ is also significant. After the Albert Hall
reading (which disappointed Ginsberg in its ramshackle nature, too many poets, and his own
embarrassment for being drunk by the time his turn came), Ginsberg drafted, but never sent,
a letter to the Times Literary Supplement:
there was the spontaneity of youths working together for a public incarnation of a
new consciousness everyone’s aware of this last half decade in Albion (thanks to the
many minstrels from Mersey’s shores & Manhattan’s). 137
Whilst the Mersey here is not referring to the Liverpool poets, but rather to the Beatles, one
cannot read the reference to Albion without thinking of all the ‘Blakeian signs’ Ginsberg
found, or wanted to find, in Liverpool and his England visit.
135
‘Gates of Eden’ was also a song by Bob Dylan, on his Bringing it All Back Home album, released
in March 1965 (Columbia, CS9128), two months before Ginsberg wrote this poem.
136
Please Please Me topped the UK album chart for 30 weeks in 1963, with ‘Twist and Shout’
reaching number 3 in the UK Chart in August, and reaching number 2 in the US Chart in April 1964
(The Warner Guide to UK and US Hit Singles, pp. 86, 93)
137
Ginsberg, cited in Miles, Sixties, p. 61.
93
CONCLUSION
In his letter dated 8th April 1966, Ginsberg’s biographical note includes reference to Patten’s
‘short poems with Scouse vowels’ (fig 2.5). This, like the other letters between these two, is
not a letter to a fan, but to a fellow poet. This, I believe, is significant in the light of how the
relationship between Ginsberg and the Merseybeat poets has been viewed. The relationship,
as I stated at the beginning of this chapter, is not simple. The position of all three Liverpool
Poets is clear in their critical comments on the Beat imitations of their contemporaries. They
are aware of the American writers, but they are not their followers:
They’re all there and hanging out in San Francisco, with Ferlinghetti, or in New
York. It was great – liberating – and that’s what we talked about too, from our point
of view: your relationships, celebrating the life around you, celebrating ordinary
conversation style… and what’s more real than that? 138
It is worth noting here that John Lennon arrived at a similar conclusion; a ‘prescient belief’
held by Lennon and Stuart Sutcliffe, according to Philip Norman, was that ‘the city to which
they belonged [Liverpool] was unique in Britain – in the whole world – and deserved to be
celebrated in art and culture just as American Beat poets … had enshrined San Francisco.’139
Merseybeat poetry is influenced by the thoughts behind the American movement, by the
emphasis on communication both for and within an outsider group (the Six Gallery was
emphatically not an academic setting), as well as taking performative lessons from Ginsberg.
Sources of influence are clearly complex, and the Beat movement was undoubtedly exciting,
fresh, and new. But the Merseybeat poets took from it what they felt was useful, applying
their own English – and more specifically Liverpudlian – sensibilities, and, whilst clearly
admiring Ginsberg, not merely imitating his work. As we saw earlier, the ‘daughters of
Albion’ take the ‘dawn ferry’ home, not a New York yellow cab.
At some point during his time in Liverpool, Ginsberg did declare that Liverpool was ‘the
centre of the consciousness of the human universe’. The full quotation as it appears in The
Liverpool Scene is ‘Liverpool, which I think is at the present moment the centre of the
consciousness of the human universe’ (TLS, 15). It is also recorded in the anthology as
‘Allen Ginsberg talking’ – in other words, this is not a considered academic position, but
perhaps just something said lightly in discussion. Furthermore, the qualification at the
beginning of Ginsberg’s remark – ‘at the present moment’ – has been ignored. Whilst
calling the phrase a ‘typical exaggeration’, George Melly says that ‘if you substitute “the
138
139
Interview with Roger McGough, November 2012.
Norman, p. 136.
94
young” for “the human universe” it was surprisingly accurate.’140 This was 1965,
Beatlemania and the Mersey Beat scene were at the top of the charts, but if it was Liverpool
that year, it would be ‘Swinging London’ the next. In his autobiography, McGough treats the
quotation with typical humour, saying that ‘depending on who you talked to in the pubs and
clubs around town’, Ginsberg ‘was either quoting the bleeding obvious or going just a teenyweeny bit over the top’.141
The 1965 visit was, indeed, ‘more of a social whirl than a performing occasion’,142 but it is
also the case that the Merseybeat poets also thought of it as a social experience. They took
Ginsberg to the Cavern, the Walker Art Gallery,143 arranged a tour of the city, and brought
him into their social circle at the Phil and Ye Cracke. Ginsberg certainly didn’t go to
Liverpool primarily to meet the poets: it was the music he was most interested in. But this
works both ways – the Merseybeat poets, by 1965, had already carved themselves a local
niche, performing weekly sessions at pubs and clubs and, in Patten’s case, producing a little
magazine. That national exposure for the movement came after Ginsberg’s visit owes more
to the fact that the world was focused on the city for its music, rather than because the
literary world was awoken at this moment by Ginsberg.
A parallel can be drawn here with the dedication of The Liverpool Scene: ‘To the Beatles
without whom etc.’ – the book certainly might not have been possible without the Beatles, in
that media attention from the capital and elsewhere was drawn into the city largely because
of the success of the group (Beatlemania), but this was not true of the scene itself. Indeed,
Donald Carroll added this dedication more as a marketing tool than for any real gratitude to
the group – and note, too, even within the dedication, the irreverence of the ‘etc.’. Mersey
Beat might have been the impetus for external eyes turning on the city and for Ginsberg’s
own visit, but the poetry scene of Merseybeat was alive before that and would continue on
the same path after he had returned to London and the Beatles had cut their next LP.
140
Melly, Revolt, p. 214.
McGough, Said, p. 164. Furthermore, Ginsberg appears to repoint his grand phrase from Liverpool
back to San Francisco two years later, as Derek Taylor quotes him as saying, in 1987, ‘Nineteen sixtyseven was a remarkable year for young people because solitary individuals’ consciousness seemed
finally to come together in the Human Be-In in San Francisco’ (Taylor, p. 178).
142
Warner, ‘Raising the Consciousness?’, p. 100. McGough also summed up his memories of the visit
by saying ‘He sort of came and went really as far as that’s concerned’ (Interview with Roger
McGough, November 2012).
143
In his 2006 interview with Warner, Patten claims that: ‘We both took a tab [of acid] and spent
hours and hours in the Walker Art Gallery walking around. We saw it in a new light, in fact many
different lights.’ (Brian Patten, cited in Warner, ‘Raising the Consciousness?’, p. 105).
141
95
CHAPTER THREE: VERBAL EXPRESSION AND THE LIVE EVENT
The preceding chapters have discussed the ideas behind the ‘Mersey’ and ‘Beat’ sides of the
movement. The two aspects come together here to show how Merseybeat manifested itself
in Liverpool in the 1960s: by live performance. We have already seen that literary critics
have, in the past, dismissed the movement as lacking in substance – something which the
poets have used to comic effect, as in their listing of some early negative reviews in their
tour to celebrate the 30th anniversary of The Mersey Sound (see fig 3.1). However, this thesis
argues that critics have not used the appropriate tools to deal with these poets, or have
ignored the other aspects of their work which exist outside of the printed page, which has
prevented evaluation of the movement on its proper grounds – loco-specificity, verbal
expression, audience connection, live performance.
Allen Ginsberg’s visit to Liverpool was not the only way in which the Beats connected with
the Merseybeat movement. The Six Gallery reading, mentioned in the previous chapter,
which launched Ginsberg’s poetic career, is significant in a wider context as the catalyst for
a new kind of poetry reading. What is notable about the Six Gallery reading is its
informality. It was in an art gallery, not a lecture hall, and, crucially, the audience had a part
to play. Jack Kerouac’s interjections during ‘Howl’, shouting ‘Go!’ after each line, driving
Ginsberg on, were effectively part of the reading itself.1 Don Cusic, evaluating Ginsberg in
The Poet as Performer (a survey of performers of the twentieth century, and how poets
might deal with the demands of performance), writes that it is ‘his performances’ and ‘the
voice’ that made him ‘a well-known poet’.2 He notes that the wider Beat movement sought
to ‘capture the speech of the voices around them (as well as their own) and put it down on
paper so the reader “heard” the words as well as read them’.3 This emphasis on voice, indeed
on ‘the voice’, was a great inspiration to Merseybeat.
Whilst the previous chapter ended by discussing the desire of the Merseybeat poets to
distance themselves from American Beat poetry, what the quotation from Adrian Henri’s
‘Notes on Painting and Poetry’ showed is not only the fact that ‘your own breath-and-speech
measure is obviously conditioned by the kind of speech you hear around you from birth’
(TAN, 77), and so therefore should reference Liverpool rather than New York, but also that it
is yours. To write for one’s own voice also means that one’s own voice is needed in the
performance of that writing. Charles Olson’s ‘Projective Verse’ is a clear inspiration,
1
See the description of the set-up and the reading itself in Barry Miles, Allen Ginsberg: a biography
(London: Virgin Books, 2002), pp. 192-4.
2
Don Cusic, The Poet as Performer (Lanham: University Press of America, 1991), p. 75.
3
Cusic, p. 80.
96
alongside Ginsberg, for the idea of breath-measure: ‘the line comes (I swear it) from the
breath, from the breathing of the man who writes,’ and poetry comes from: ‘the HEAD, by
way of the EAR, to the syllable,/ the HEART by way of the BREATH, to the line’.4 The
authorial presence and the physicality of live performance are aspects of the Merseybeat
movement which deserve exploration.
McGough saw ‘our local Beat poets’ writing about ‘yellow cabs, and walking along 52 nd
Street’ because ‘this was the hip furniture you could bring into your verse to appear cool.’5
The Merseybeat poets, on the other hand, took from the Beat movement an emphasis on
everyday life and on one’s own experience, so it was natural for them to ‘set poems in a
Liverpool landscape’.6 In fact, despite leaving the city in 1967, Brian Patten has not lost his
Liverpool accent. By reading poems in his own voice, Patten is taking the same stand,
retaining his specific Liverpool roots. In 2010, at a reading at the Bluecoat, Patten made a
comment about his accent and use of voice. Introducing ‘Cousin Lesley’s See-Through
Stomach’, inspired by watching The Invisible Man on television with his cousin as a child,
he said: ‘only a Liverpudlian could get away with this non-rhyme’.7 He then proceeded to
read the opening line: ‘Cousin Lesley took a pill/ That made her go invisible’8 and
deliberately paused after this. ‘Pill’ and ‘invisible’, which do not rhyme in Received
Pronunciation, do rhyme here in Patten’s Liverpudlian accent. ‘Cousin Lesley’ is a
humorous poem, but the audience’s laughter at the Bluecoat in 2010 had more to do with the
intentional ‘unrhyme’, this sign of Patten’s non-conformity, and the deliberate pause that
drew attention to it, than the content itself.9
One of the most important results of regular live events is the creation of different
performance instances – we cannot reproduce the exact same reading every time. Charles
Bernstein’s Close Reading recognises this, referring to a poem’s ‘fundamentally plural
existence’.10 Bernstein argues that a reading ‘extends the patterning of poetry into another
4
Charles Olson, ‘Projective Verse’, in Collected Prose, ed. by Donald Allen (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1997), pp. 239-49, p. 242.
5
Roger McGough, Said and Done: the autobiography (London: Random House, 2005), p. 143.
6
McGough, Said, p. 143.
7
Brian Patten at the Bluecoat ‘Chapter and Verse’ Festival, 13 October 2010.
8
Patten, Brian, Gargling with Jelly (London: Viking Kestrel, 1985), p. 16.
9
Two of Patten’s collections include notes which specifically reference the importance of the live
event. His first, Little Johnny’s Confession (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1967) includes this in
the opening biographical note: ‘Many of them were written for the voice, like songs, and for a fuller
appreciation should be read aloud.’ A later collection, Grave Gossip (London: George Allen &
Unwin, 1979), includes this note from Patten himself before the contents page: ‘Mostly the poems
first found a public at poetry readings, and my thanks are due to the people who arranged the
readings, and the many people who have attended them.’
10
Charles Bernstein, ‘Introduction’, in Close Listening: Poetry and the Performed Word, ed. by
Charles Bernstein (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), pp. 3-26, p. 9.
97
dimension, adding another semantic layer to the poem’s multiformity.’11 Peter Middleton
also writes of ‘the inescapably intersubjective, plural condition of reading’, 12 and states that,
crucially: ‘Poetry readings proliferate versions of the poem, each version displacing but not
replacing every other.’13 In fact, the poem as a work exists as the sum total of all these
different experiences of the text, both multivarious readings and other expressions.
Furthermore, as John Miles Foley states, an oral poem is ‘profoundly contingent on its
context’, and cannot stand alone, but rather includes ‘the performance, the audience, the
poet, the music, the specialized way of speaking, the gestures, the costuming, the visual aids,
the occasion, the ritual, and myriad other aspects of the given poem’s reality.’14 Whilst
Foley’s work is on primary oral cultures, the statement stands: a live performance involves
more than just hearing the words. Therefore, this chapter will not only consider performance
instances of particular texts, but also the staging, the milieu, the audience – all aspects which
feed into and affect the performance.
AUDIENCE AND ATMOSPHERE
Middleton recognises that listening to poetry ‘requires effort’, and that ‘attentiveness is
vulnerable to distractions of every kind (beer, traffic, hard chairs, comings and goings, even
the very presence of the poet)’.15 It is here that I suggest performance studies may be of
some use in explaining how the Merseybeat scene utilised audience and atmosphere. Richard
Schechner is a performance studies pioneer, whose theory of Selective Inattention in live
audiences is particularly relevant to the Merseybeat scene.
Schechner believes there are two kinds of audience. The accidental audience is a group of
people who are unconnected to each other and the performance, and yet have chosen to
attend. The integral audience attends because they have to – Schechner cites the opening
nights of commercial shows attended by critics.16 However, the result is the opposite of what
one might expect: ‘the accidental audience pays closer attention than does an integral
audience’.17 For Merseybeat, this has two specific meanings. The accidental audience, who
happen upon the reading, will be far more integrated into the performance than the second
11
Bernstein, Close Listening, p. 10.
Peter Middleton, ‘Poetry’s Oral Stage’, in Performance and Authenticity in the Arts, ed. by Salim
Kemal and Ivan Gaskell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 215-53, p. 221.
13
Charles Bernstein, ‘Hearing Voices’, in The sound of poetry, the poetry of sound, ed. by Marjorie
Perloff and Craig Dworkin (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009), pp. 142-148, p. 148.
14
John Miles Foley, How to Read an Oral Poem (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2002), p. 60.
15
Middleton, ‘Poetry’s Oral Stage’, p. 222.
16
See Richard Schechner, Essays on Performance Theory 1970-1976 (New York: Drama Book
Specialists, 1977), p. 146.
17
Schechner, p. 147, author’s italics.
12
98
type, who can become ‘part of the spectacle for the general audience’.18 As a result, the
accidental audience ‘become the artists along with the performers’.19 They make their own
show, as it were, which is exactly what Henri wanted: ‘People are being fed their
entertainment. They no longer have a chance to do things for themselves. We are trying to
give them a chance.’20
‘“Blasts of Language”: Changes in Oral Poetics in Britain since 1965’ details Middleton’s
research with Nicky Marsh and Victoria Sheppard, seeking to answer how and why ‘poetry
readings have come to be an essential part of the writing and distribution of poetry over the
past 40 years’.21 Interestingly, the 1965 starting point removes the beginnings of the
Merseybeat movement (and others) from the discussion. What I find most interesting is that
Middleton et al. give accounts from two poets who specifically cite Henri as important in
their own trajectory as performers of poetry.22 First, Peter Finch, who says of Henri in The
Liverpool Scene that: ‘He was engaging in a theatrical way with the audience’, the crucial
point being that: ‘this style of “entertainment” in a poetry reading’ was ‘a move away from
the more academic approach.’23 The excitement that Finch felt at this new way of
experiencing poetry is echoed by Maggie O’Sullivan. Middleton introduces her recollection
by referring to Henri as ‘the Liverpool performance poet’, highlighting the performative
nature of his practice, and she goes on to observe: ‘He was the first living poet that I’d ever
encountered. I thought it was tremendously exciting, his delivery and the energy of his
work.’24 The emphasis on ‘entertainment’ is important. In fact, the article’s title quotation
comes from Finch’s emphatic dismissal of ‘traditional’ poetry readings, where you have
‘concentrated language blasted at you’.25 Henri’s theatre, his energy, and his desire to
entertain are key elements of the Merseybeat movement. In an article for Sphinx magazine,
in 1964, Henri discussed his involvement in the Poetry Conference at the Edinburgh Festival
that year. The article is primarily concerned with communication and the audience, and the
18
Schechner, p. 146.
Schechner, p. 153.
20
Alix Palmer, ‘Beauty – in a bus ticket’, Daily Herald, 23 May 1963, p. 15.
21
Peter Middleton, Nicky Marsh, and Victoria Sheppard, ‘“Blasts of Language”: Changes in Oral
Poetics in Britain since 1965’, Oral Tradition, 21 (2006), 44-67, p. 46.
22
Both these poets also cite Bob Cobbing as an influence. The later generation of poets interviewed
by Middleton cite Adrian Mitchell as making a significant impression on them. Mitchell, a friend of
Henri’s, was a vocal political activist as well as a brilliant performer – see, for example, his reading of
‘To Whom It May Concern’, about the Vietnam war, from the 1965 International Poetry Incarnation,
in Peter Whitehead’s Wholly Communion film.
23
Middleton et al, ‘Blasts of Language’, p. 50.
24
Maggie O’Sullivan, cited in Middleton et al, ‘Blasts of Language’, p. 51.
25
Peter Finch, cited in Middleton et al, ‘Blasts of Language’, p. 53.
19
99
importance of both. Henri was ‘amazed to see how little discussion there was on this basic
issue’26 Henri begins the article by observing that:
the trouble is that poets don’t share their audience’s background – and as modern
poetry is concerned almost exclusively with making personal statements it follows
as night follows day that most people won’t be interested in what they have to say.27
In contrast, he claimed: ‘Roger McGough, Brian Patten, myself, and others, care about most
of the things that our audience care about’.28 Indeed, in The Liverpool Scene – which records
interviews with the poets alongside the poetry – McGough wants to: ‘get away from poetry
as something that happens where there’s a glass and a bottle of water’ (TLS, 30), and Patten
stresses: ‘You want to communicate it’ (TLS, 32). The direct communication link that these
poets seek in their performance of poetry is so effective because of their awareness of the
audience and their attitudes and experiences. However, it is not that the audience of a
traditional reading do not also ‘share a background’, but rather that the Merseybeat poets are
seeking out a different audience. Merseybeat was based on a set of values and experiences
which stood apart from those middle-class assumptions implicit in the traditional poetry
reading.
In What Makes Sound Patterns Expressive? Rueben Tsur discusses his theory of the modes
of hearing: ‘We seem to be tuned, normally, to the nonspeech mode; but as soon as the
incoming stream of sounds gives the slightest indication that it may be carrying linguistic
information, we automatically switch to the speech mode’.29 In other words, we have to
decide whether to treat what we hear as pure sound or as speech, and we interpret speech in
a different way to other environmental noises, but the ‘poetic mode’ falls somewhere
between the two. In the ‘poetic mode’, we hear the sounds formed by linguistic elements and
pay attention to them – as if the ‘sounds patterns’ are ‘somehow expressive of their
atmosphere’30 – rather than, as in the pure ‘speech mode’, receiving what we hear simply as
linguistic information. This theory is particularly interesting here in the light of Middleton
and Schechner’s theories of attention in performance. If we agree with Tsur’s ideas, the
poet’s reading of a poem is somewhere between the two usual modes, and therefore has the
26
Adrian Henri, ‘the poet, the audience and non-communication’, in The Art of Adrian Henri, 19551985 (London: Expression Printers, 1986), p. 45. Article originally published in Sphinx, autumn 1964.
He states that, at this Poetry Conference: ‘only the Liverpool contingent (Brian Patten and myself),
Alexander Trocchi and perhaps Pete Brown seemed at all concerned with communication’ (Art of
Adrian Henri, p. 45).
27
Art of Adrian Henri, p. 45.
28
Art of Adrian Henri, p. 45.
29
Reuven Tsur, What Makes Sound Patterns Expressive? (Durham: Duke University Press, 1992), p.
11.
30
Tsur, p. 9.
100
potential to be mixed up with the ‘nonspeech mode’ of the circumambient orality. This
ability to switch between modes and to shift one’s attention is what Finch is describing here:
What you do in listening to poetry is you don’t listen to everything, some of it you
take in and you use traditional comprehension of it; otherwise you just listen to the
sound the words make. … Couple that with the concentration problem. If you’re not
accustomed to sitting for several hours listening to somebody talk to you in that
way, your mind is going to drift.31
The ‘concentration problem’ does not exist in the same way for the Merseybeat movement: a
typical Monday night at Sampson & Barlow’s would include a number of different
performers, poets and musicians, and as such one would not be ‘sitting for several hours
listening to somebody talk’, but would rather experience a variety of sets to break up the
evening. For Schechner, the accidental audience ‘attends from pleasure’,32 and this is in part
due to the way in which the reading is set up as an experience. By hosting ‘open mic’-type
events and readings in pubs and other social venues, the Merseybeat poets gave their
audience permission to treat the poetry reading as part of their evening’s entertainment,
moving in and out of the performance space as it suited them. Finch’s comments also point
to another important aspect: the performance venue. Merseybeat performances required
another move away from the traditional poetry reading, often held in universities, perhaps
organised by the English Department, in ‘podium oriented’ lecture theatres, to use George
Economou’s phrase.33 What the Merseybeat poets did, by taking poetry out of the lecture
hall and into the public sphere, was not only to advertise their readings as another form of
entertainment (rather than connected to education and lecturing), but also to place the poetry
in public and on a level with the other forms of public entertainment available, such as music
(both the jukeboxes in pubs and live performances). In addition, poetry readings are
‘inherently collective events’34 where a text is experienced by a number of people at the
same time. The collective nature of the audience, a sense of togetherness, shapes the way
that the audience respond to the reader. The atmosphere of the reading is therefore a key
component in the success of the reading itself, as a particular instance of a work is created in
the space where poet and audience come together. Not only do ‘audience and poet
collaborate in the performance of the poem’,35 as Middleton says, but the space of
performance also has a part to play in the creation of this instance of a work.
31
Peter Finch, cited in Middleton et al, ‘Blasts of Language’, p. 54.
Schechner, p. 146.
33
George Economou, cited in Peter Middleton, ‘The Contemporary Poetry Reading’, in Close
Listening: Poetry and the Performed Word, ed. by Charles Bernstein (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1998), pp. 262-99, p. 271-2.
34
Peter Middleton, Distant Reading: Performance, Readership, and Consumption in Contemporary
Poetry (Tuscaloosa: The University of Alabama Press, 2005), p. 93.
35
Middleton, ‘The Contemporary Poetry Reading’, p. 291.
32
101
AUDIENCE AND THE UNIQUE EVENT
The Merseybeat poets are not only aware of the audience but also the space and place of
performance. A reading is a unique event in a particular time and place, and all sounds
within that space contribute to the audience’s experience. Circumambient sound is crucial to
readings. ‘The orality of the milieu,’ as Walter J. Ong states, ‘can deeply affect both the
composition of texts and their interpretation’.36 One of the ways in which the milieu affects
the reading relates to how the space is used. Middleton’s list of potential distractions at a
reading – ‘beer, traffic, hard chairs, comings and goings, even the distracting appearance of
the poet’37 – can actually heighten the experience, drawing attention to the specificity of that
event. Indeed, the contemporary press often refer to the setting. For example, a 1968 article
by Julian Holland, titled ‘Britain’s unexpected BOOM’, claims that: ‘Public readings in
pubs, universities, schools, theatres, coffee-bars, bookshops, libraries, concert halls are now
the life-blood of poetry.’38 The fact that Holland says ‘now’ suggests that this is a new
phenomenon, and the listing of the venues suggests the ranges of new venues for poetry: the
move away from the university and into non-academic spaces. Henri’s account of an
evening in Bolton as part of the 1969 Writers’ Tour of Lancashire is telling:
Least successful evening, though many people came. Beautiful new theatre, nice
people running it. Too formal. ... We stop early and suggest informal talk in the bar.
Crammed in, everyone firing questions, much more successful and genuine. Feel we
were talking about what they wanted.39
The location of the poetry reading matters as much as the audience that are participating in
it. Using borrowed spaces such as the bar of the theatre here or the back rooms of pubs in
Liverpool is not a failing but rather an opportunity for informal encounter.
It is interesting to note that whilst the Merseybeat poets did open their poetry to a wide
audience, and did succeed in breaking from the traditional reading, the barriers were still
very much in place. When William Burroughs made his Final Academy tour, the evening in
Liverpool (5th October 1982) was at the Centre Hotel. Geoff Ward, who organised the event,
believes that even in the 1980s, ‘there was still a sense of “them and us”’, and that:
36
Walter J. Ong, ‘Text as Interpretation: Mark and After’, in Oral Tradition in Literature:
Interpretation in Context, ed. by John Miles Foley (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1986), p.
164.
37
Middleton, Distant Reading, p. 30.
38
Archive clipping, Henri K/12, Julian Holland, ‘Britain’s unexpected BOOM’, n.d.
39
Archive clipping, Henri K/12, ‘Events While Guarding the Sacred Flame’, Times Literary
Supplement, 10 April 1969.
102
I remember thinking, right from the start, I’m not going to bring William Burroughs
and the University together, that’s just not going to happen. If this is going to
happen, it’s going to happen in town.40
The Burroughs evening was not only in a non-academic setting, it also attracted a nonacademic audience:
I think some of the punks who turned up for the reading, it would have been the first
reading they’d come to. .... Everybody wore black jeans, everybody looked like they
were in Echo and the Bunnymen. Men, women, everybody.41
Ward’s attention to the dress of the audience accords with Middleton’s comment about
potential distractions:
The space is precariously and only partially transformed from its mundane use as a
gallery, pub, or lecture hall, whose signs remain prominently in evidence throughout
the scene of textual performance, and this transformation of the backdrop tells the
participants that the everyday world, despite the way it is crowded with other
activities and purposes, can still provide a space for poetry.42
Unplanned sound and visual cues cannot and should not be ignored. It is all these additions
which create the temporal and spatial reading. The social spaces of these events are indeed
part of the ‘everyday world’, and are chosen accordingly: Henri’s experience in Bolton was
that the informal exchange suited both him and the audience better; Ward knew that the
audience would only come if the setting was right.
The uniqueness of an event also comes from its place as a moment in time and space, as
something which cannot be repeated exactly the same again. Circumambient sound (such as
audience laughter) cannot be controlled, but other sounds which can affect a reading – and
set it apart as a unique event – can also come from the poets themselves. At Burroughs’
Final Academy evening in Liverpool, one of the poems Henri read was ‘Adrian Henri’s Last
Will and Testament’. After reading the poem, Henri described it as ‘obviously applicable to
this occasion’43 because Burroughs is mentioned twice. He has chosen this specific poem
because of its relevance and connection to Burroughs. However, this knowledge of the
setting and audience is also indicated in another way. In linguistic analysis of everyday
speech and conversation, pitch accents are a potent conversational tool which indicate salient
information and knowledge of previous discussion.44 The epigraph of this poem is one of
40
Interview with Geoff Ward, February 2013.
Interview with Geoff Ward, February 2013.
42
Middleton, Distant Reading, p. 30.
43
Recording of the Final Academy event, 5 October 1982, Centre Hotel, Liverpool [accessed via the
British Library Listening Service, T7411, T7413].
44
‘Humans can interact with maximum cognitive efficiency if the items most worthy of attention are
articulated with the most energy – the highest pitch. On the other hand, items that a speaker assumes
41
103
Burroughs’s maxims: ‘No one owns life, but anyone who can pick up a fryingpan owns
death’ (TMS1, 13). In this instance, Henri drops his voice after the epigraph, saying ‘William
Burroughs’ in a much quieter voice. A reason for this, according to linguistic analyst Ann
Wennerstrom, is because this is information that the audience already has – they know
(certainly Burroughs knows) where the quotation is from.
A comparison of this instance with two other recordings of Henri’s ‘Last Will...’ shows how
a poem can be altered for effect in different situations. The 30th anniversary cassette
produced by Penguin has already been mentioned, but the other recording which is
particularly relevant to this chapter and the next is The Incredible New Liverpool Scene LP.45
It is the earliest of the three recordings of this poem I analyse here (1967, 1982, and 1997),
and all three represent different types of staging: the Scene LP and Final Academy are live
recordings (although the Scene LP has been produced and mastered for publication, whilst
the Final Academy tapes are a straight record of the night); the Penguin Audio Cassette
(released in 1997 to mark the 30th anniversary of The Mersey Sound) is a studio recording. In
terms of unplanned sound, the Final Academy instance records Henri stumbling over the
pronunciation of ‘Kropotkin’, and giggling at it, as well as the audience’s laughter at certain
sections. The first ‘provision’ (that Henri will leave his priceless collections ‘to all Liverpool
poets under 23 who are also blues singers and failed sociology students’ [TMS1, 13]) gets a
laugh on both the Scene LP and the Final Academy recording, as does the provision about
the proceeds from sales of relics. There is also a distinct sound of paper rustling on the Final
Academy recording at this point, indicating that Henri is reading from the page rather than
from memory (in The Mersey Sound there is a page break here in the printed text). The
Penguin Audio Cassette, being a studio recording, does not have any circumambient noise.
Henri announces the poem with its title, and then reads both the epigraph and its author (on
the Scene LP, he does not attribute the quotation to Burroughs), pausing before reading the
poem itself. It is clear, in all recordings, that this is an epigraph rather than the opening of
the poem. To return to (conversational) linguistic analysis, one reason for this is that quoted
speech, in Wennerstrom’s observations, ‘was often set off by pauses and could sometimes
involve altered voices, with higher pitch, louder volume, and other paralinguistic features.’46
Henri reads the epigraph in such a way as to make it clear to the audience he is reading
someone else’s words rather than starting the ‘poetic mode’.
to be already active in a listener’s consciousness may be articulated with less energy and lower pitch
so that listeners need expend little cognitive effort to process them.’ Ann Wennerstrom, The Music of
Everyday Speech: Prosody and Discourse Analysis (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), p. 32.
45
The Incredible New Liverpool Scene LP, prod. by Hal Shaper (CBS, 63045, 1967). The impetus for,
and the creation of, this album has already been discussed in the Introduction. Further references
appear in the text as ‘Scene LP’.
46
Wennerstrom, p. 210.
104
On the page, his ‘imminent death’ is heralded by ‘mutely screaming I TOLD YOU SO’ (TMS1,
13). Both the capitalisation (a literalisation of ‘mutely screaming’) and the cue of
‘screaming’ might suggest that in performance this is to be emphasised, and, indeed, on the
Penguin Audio Cassette he does raise his voice. However, for the Scene LP he does not.
Other slight textual variations exist: ‘I leave the entire East Lancs Road with all its
landscapes to the British people’ in the Penguin Audio Cassette, versus ‘with its landscapes’
in the Scene LP, or Burroughs being asked to distribute Henri’s collected works ‘through’ or
‘throughout’ the land. Elsewhere it is the tone that shifts. Thus, in the final ‘provision’, in
the Penguin recording, Henri places firm emphasis on particular words:
Proceeds from the sale of my other effects to be divided equally amongst the 20
most beautiful schoolgirls in England (these to be chosen after due deliberation and
exhaustive tests by an informal committee of my friends).47
It is both the subversion of these stock phrases – ‘due deliberation’ and ‘exhaustive tests’ by
an ‘informal committee’ are the kinds of wording one might see in a legal document – and
the camaraderie his knowing tone implies that makes this lubricious ‘provision’ so amusing
to the audience.
There are other sections where the voice takes almost exactly the same path for its
expression in the three recorded versions discussed here, such as provision four: ‘Proceeds
from the sale of relics: locks of hair, pieces of floorboards I have stood on, fragments of
bone flesh teeth bits of old underwear etc. to be given to my widow’ (TMS1, 13). All
recordings treat the text which comes after the colon as an aside, with the voice being
dropped slightly, returning to the same level and tone as the opening of this section at ‘to be
given to my widow’, which is another laugh point in live recordings. The audience laugh
both at the absurdity of the suggestion, but also because of the way it is spoken. The list
starts quite reasonably, copying the traditional saints’ relic objects, but the quickening pace
from ‘bone flesh teeth’ – read as if a foregone conclusion – makes ‘bits of old underwear’ all
the more effective as a comic image because it is so incongruous. Ending this with the
throw-away ‘etc.’ adds to the effect, as, having ended the specified items with ‘old
underwear’, the audience may wonder what else there is to be in that ‘etc.’.
What this suggests is that Henri’s reading of this poem – as of a number of others – changed
over time. Certain elements are highlighted for particular readings (as with the decision to
read this for the Final Academy evening, due to its mention of Burroughs), but emphasis and
47
Text from TMS1, p. 13, italics to indicate emphasis in the Penguin Audio Cassette recording.
105
other paralinguistic features are flexible. Reading before an audience is necessarily a
different experience to reading in a recording studio (and we do not know how many times
the Penguin versions were recorded), and the different instances give the poet a chance to
either read differently each time or to develop a particular oral expression that has been
worked out and honed over several occasions.
LOCATION AND LOCALITY
The awareness of location includes an awareness of locality. For example, when Henri sent
‘I Want to Paint’ to Penguin for inclusion in The Mersey Sound, he sent Anthony Richardson
a copy of the poem with this handwritten note:
The original of this poem was written about 1961 and the only copy eventually lost.
It was rewritten from memory ... I improvise on [it] when reading and some of these
later additions have been added to the present version.
(Henri A I.i [19])
The evolution of a poem can indeed come from reading, from interactions with an audience,
and from proposing alternate lines to gauge their success, but the poems can also be changed
for particular instances of reading. One line of ‘I Want to Paint’ has been through various
manuscript versions: the poet painted at his ‘Installation’ to ‘the Chair of Poetry at Oxford’
(TMS1, 51) has been variously William Burroughs (Henri A I.i [20]), Pete Brown (Henri A
I.i [21]), or McGough (TMS1, 51), and we can imagine other names may have been used for
local effect in live performances.48 Similarly, an archival copy of ‘The New “Our Times”’
shows Henri’s attention to loco-specific details as it has been adapted for a reading in
Edinburgh (fig 3.2). This version of the poem changes names to translate the poem to
another city. For example: the ‘Police-Constable’ is now called Angus MacKay; the
‘Bearded ... couple’ are from Edinburgh rather than Liverpool; and ‘A certain Mrs Elspeth
Clout’ has moved from the Huyton area to Murrayfield (TMS1, 47). Henri has also gone
further, adding in Scottish references, so that the ear-battering ‘chip-shop proprietors’
(TMS1, 47) are now accused at Leith, where their Liverpudlian trial location is undisclosed,
and Mrs Clout dies specifically in Grassmarket. Recorded versions of this poem also have
Henri affecting accents for the recorded speech. In both the Scene LP and the Penguin Audio
Cassette he reads the ‘U.S. State Dept.’ (TMS1, 47) spokesman’s line in an American accent,
while the chip-shop owners are clearly Lancastrian. (He also reads number three as if he
were reading a headline from a newspaper, mimicking that particular style.) It is probable,
therefore, that this relocation of the poem would have Henri affecting a Scottish accent for
this couple, bringing it even more obviously into Scotland, and away from Liverpool as the
48
See also Henri’s ‘note on improvisation’, (TAN, 63-4).
106
original site. The effect which the poem produces is more important than the printed text of
the poem itself, and part of this effect is rooted in the specificity of texts to time and place.
Each performance of a poem occupies a new site, tailored to the audience of that moment.
The manuscript of ‘The New “Our Times”’ also includes the dedication ‘for Felix Fénéon’
which is printed in The Mersey Sound but not announced in either the Penguin Audio
Cassette or the Scene LP. The manuscript follows this with the explanation ‘a free 1960’s
version of Fénéon’s “Our Times”’ (see fig 3.2), which is situated at the bottom of the page in
The Mersey Sound, signalled by an asterisk after the dedication (‘a free 1960s Liverpool
version of Fénéon’s great “Our Times”‘ (TMS1, 47)). We cannot know if Henri read this
contextual introduction at the reading, but when he was making his additions he did not
cross it out, which might suggest he did read it in this instance. There is audience laughter
audible on the Scene LP recording of this poem, with Henri clearly aware of the effect he
was having: for example, he pauses after the ‘jellybaby’, waiting for the audience’s laughter
to subside before continuing ‘thrown at a passing pop singer’, even though there is no
caesura in the printed text (TMS1, 47).
Specific references connect the poets to their public. It is particularly important that in the
Scottish version of ‘The New “Our Times”’ Paul McCartney is 23 rather than 21, as he was
when Henri wrote the poem in January 1964. The audience at this reading would have
known this, and Henri’s use of a correct common cultural reference is important for his own
authenticity. Paul Du Noyer described Henri as ‘closer to Scouse populism than to high
culture’,49 which serves as a summary of one of the central tenets of this movement:
everyday imagery and common cultural referencing is used to foster a direct connection with
the audience. Henri described ‘our audience’ as a ‘predominantly teenage, non-intellectual,
non-student audience [who] like to laugh with McGough and cry with Patten about the sort
of problems we all share.’50 It is the ‘we’ here which is important, suggesting that the poets
are on the same level as their audience, rather than standing above them. Furthermore,
contemporary reviews of Merseybeat readings often imply that the audience knew the poems
beforehand, with statements such as ‘some of you may have the best selling Penguin book ...
in which many of Adrian’s best known poems appeared’.51 However, what some critics
intend as an insult is actually what the audience readily accept. To say that the reading
consisted of ‘at least half a dozen others which seem to have been doing the rounds for some
49
Paul Du Noyer, Liverpool: Wondrous Place – Music from Cavern to Cream (London: Virgin
Books, 2002), p. 94.
50
Art of Adrian Henri, p. 45.
51
Archive clipping, Henri K/12, Oasis (souvenir magazine), p. 2.
107
time’52 is not negative, or a sign that the poets do not have newer work, but rather that the
poems are familiar to the audience, and are being repeated precisely because the audience
want to hear them again – the poems are supposed to be ‘doing the rounds’. As McGough
states: ‘the kids didn’t look on it as Poetry with a capital “P”, they looked on it as modern
entertainment, part of the pop movement’ (TLS, 78), and if they like a song or a poem, they
want to hear it again. A setlist for a Mersey Beat band would include crowd-pleasers, old
favourites, the band’s best known tracks as well as new material – why can’t a Merseybeat
poet do the same?
In early 1966, the three Merseybeat poets were asked to perform at the Bluecoat Chambers,
a traditional arts venue in Liverpool (rather than the pubs at which they had their regular
weekly sessions). It was reviewed in the Guardian in a ‘letter from our own correspondent’,
John O’Callaghan: ‘One hundred and fifty were squashed into the tiny auditorium, and as
many again heard the two-hour show in an overspill room by loudspeaker for nothing.’53 The
‘overspill room’ is also of interest – in that it shows there was great demand for the poets. It
reappears in McGough’s own account of the reading, when speaking to another journalist:
Once we played in a posh place. It was full, you know – 150 people. There were 100
in an outside room listening to our poetry on a relay system. We had sort of joined
the Establishment. We had to get back from there quickly to other places.54
Although this reading was clearly a success, it also marked, for McGough, the wrong
environment for their work:
The atmosphere I like to read in, is the bar atmosphere where people can have a
drink while they are listening. At the end of it, if they feel like it, they can have
‘Knees Up Mother Brown’.55
This atmosphere is crucial. Art is a ‘state of encounter’.56 The pubs and clubs allow the
audience to mix with the performers, and situate the poetry performance in dialogue with
popular cultural forms. Sound, for Ong, ‘situates [us] in the midst of a world’.57 Whether one
calls it ‘unplanned sound’,58 ‘unintended sounds’,59 or ‘white noise’, circumambient orality
52
Anthony Thwaite, ‘Review’, Times Literary Supplement, 8 May 1969, p. 486.
John O’Callaghan, ‘Liverpool Letter’, The Guardian, 14 February 1966, p. 34.
54
Peter Brock, ‘The newest sound – it’s poetry’, Daily Express, 25 February 1966, p. 30.
55
Brock, p. 30 – cf. Working Men’s or Variety Clubs.
56
Nicolas Bourriaud, Relational Aesthetics, trans. by. Simon Pleasance and Fronza Woods with
Mathieu Copeland (Djion: Presses du Réel, 2002), p. 18.
57
Walter J. Ong, The Presence of the Word: Some Prolegomena for Cultural and Religious History
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1967), p. 129.
58
Middleton, ‘The Contemporary Poetry Reading’, p. 270.
59
Adalaide Morris, ‘Introduction: Sound States’, in Sound States: Innovative Poetics and Acoustical
Technologies, ed. by Adalaide Morris (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997), pp. 114, p. 4.
53
108
is that which is not part of the text of the poem being read but what is added to it by the
atmosphere of the reading – highlighting the ‘world’ you are in the ‘midst’ of. Instead of
detracting from the poem, it adds a layer of meaning: this reading is happening, here and
now, and you are part of something which will not happen exactly like this again. The
audience are part of this experience, both in the sense that they are needed to foster lines of
direct communication, but also in that their noise and reactions are part of the creative site.
AUTHORIAL PRESENCE AND CONTROL
The live event presents another issue. If the reader of a poem is that poem’s author, a listener
will, in all likelihood, give authority to that interpretation. Indeed, in performing his or her
poem, the poet is producing ‘an exaggerated, dramatized, picture of authorship.’60 By
speaking his or her own words, the poet’s performance can be taken as the authoritative
version. Susan Stewart notes that: ‘It is not just sound that we hear; it is the sound of an
individual person speaking sounds.’61 In the Merseybeat movement, as in most modern
poetry reading instances, the author usually reads their own work, and so the audience pays
attention to their way of reading:
Poems compel attention to aspects of rhythm, rhyme, consonance, assonance,
onomatopoeia, and other forms and patterns of sound to which attention is not
necessarily given in the ongoing flow of prose and conversation.62
As these are created by the human voice, they call attention to the voice itself and to the
poet, both as originator and vocaliser. The poem on the page is made up of neutral text –
neutral in that, as Wolfgang Iser pointed out, the reader ‘can never learn from the text how
accurate or inaccurate are his views of it’,63 as the printed poem cannot respond to the
reader’s emotions or influence those emotions with anything more than the silent page.
Whilst there are certainly some printed elements which can aid a speaker (punctuation such
as commas and dashes for pace, or question marks and exclamation marks for tone) there is
also a marked lack of guidance from the printed text. In contrast, the reading can never be
neutral.64 ‘It is,’ as Ong says, ‘impossible to speak a word orally without any intonation’.65
Performance features further supplement the text:
60
Middleton, ‘Poetry’s Oral Stage’, p. 224.
Susan Stewart, Poetry and the Fate of the Senses (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press,
2002), p. 109.
62
Susan Stewart, p. 68.
63
Wolfgang Iser, The Act of Reading: A Theory of Aesthetic Response (London: Routledge & Kegan
Paul, 1978), p. 166.
64
‘Features of spoken language are not reproducible readily in written language. For example we
have tried to convey the tone of voice, cadence and emphasis of a protest by the use of an exclamation
mark and a question mark (but this is very jejune). Punctuation, italics, and word order may help, but
61
109
By using performance features, such as repetitions, gestures, sound effects, quoted
speech, and, I argue, other prosodic manipulations, tellers attempt to draw the
empathy of the audience to their own evaluation of the events.66
Whilst Wennerstrom’s work is to do with conversation and speech (not, as Tsur would say,
the ‘poetic mode’), she has noted many uses of paralanguage which are cues for listeners
which do translate into poetry. Paralanguage – variations in pitch, tempo, tone, and so on –
cannot, by its very definition, exist on the page and is, therefore, a key aspect of what makes
up the poetry reading. Taking Henri’s ‘Tonight at Noon’ as an example, there are a number
of recorded versions where the same choices for performance have been taken, although
these are not necessarily indicated on the page. On the page, quoted speech can be clearly
indicated with quotation marks, but, as we have seen, in an oral expression some other
means of marking this off from the rest of the piece is needed (such as what Wennerstrom
calls ‘altered voices’67). In ‘Tonight at Noon’, there are some examples where quoted speech
is used for a particular effect. In all the recordings which I have heard of this poem, Henri
uses an accent during the line ‘Hitler will tell us to fight on the beaches and on the landing
fields’ (TMS1, 11). A reader would recognise the words as a (slight misquotation) of
Winston Churchill’s ‘We shall fight on the beaches’ speech to the House of Commons in
1940. In reading the poem out loud Henri adds another oral link by impersonating Churchill
for the phrase ‘on the beaches and on the landing fields’. On the page, there are no quotation
marks to indicate this is recorded speech, or anything which marks it out as not the same as
the rest of the poem’s text, but in performance Henri can mark this out. He also heightens
the juxtaposition by emphasising ‘Hitler’, as if he wants to ensure the audience ‘get’ what he
is doing, deliberately subverting the British WWII leader’s famous lines by placing them in
the mouth of his opponent.
The poem is a list of surreal or absurd images, inspired by the oxymoronic title ‘Tonight at
Noon’, taken from a Charlie Mingus LP. In The Mersey Sound (as in other printed versions)
the line ‘Supermarkets will advertise 3d EXTRA on everything’ (TMS1, 11), utilises
typography to emphasise ‘extra’ by capitialising it, representing the supermarket’s
advertising but also highlighting it visually for the reader. This reversal of the usual
supermarket practice of discounting is the first surreal idea of the poem, and, in the Penguin
Audio Cassette, Henri raises his voice, firmly declaring the word ‘extra’ to highlight the
they are rather crude.’ J. L. Austin, How to do things with words (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1962), p. 74.
65
Walter J. Ong, Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word (London: Methuen, 1982), p.
101.
66
Wennerstrom, p. 201.
67
Wennerstrom, p. 210.
110
absurdity. Other images, which are not highlighted on the page, are emphasised in the same
way (with the same emphatic pronunciation and volume), such as ‘When the leaves fall
upwards to the trees’, or ‘White Americans will demonstrate for equal rights/ in front of the
Black House’ (TMS1, 11, my italics). Both of these examples are highlighted by Henri
pausing before the surreal image, again to make sure the listener is paying attention. None of
the pauses (within lines) are represented as such on the page, this is purely an oral
performance element. Thus, for example, the line ‘Elephants will tell each other human
jokes’ (TMS1, 11) has a deliberate pause after ‘each other’ and then a clear emphasis on
‘human’. There are many such lines where the usual phrase or idea is switched or subverted.
By turning the ideas on their head, Henri builds up a list of surreal possibilities for a world
where it is ‘Tonight at Noon’, in order to make the final couplet all the more powerful. The
printed layout uses a single-word line (‘and’) to draw the eye towards these final lines:
In forgotten graveyards everywhere the dead will quietly
bury the living
and
You will tell me you love me
Tonight at noon.
(TMS1, 12)
In the Penguin Audio Cassette recording Henri pauses after ‘living’ and ‘and’, which are
both line breaks, but the pause is far longer than for other similar breaks.68 In the penultimate
line the emphasis is on ‘You’, and then the rest of the line is read without any other
emphasis, all in the same tone. Henri pauses before saying the final ‘Tonight at noon’, again
quite simply and without any other paralinguistic additions. It is as if he is simply stating a
fact, but the listener, having just heard three stanzas of absurd images, knows it to be equally
impossible. In fact, by reading this deadpan, Henri actually makes it all the more powerful
emotionally. Previously the absurd tendencies of the poem have been clearly signalled, with
pause or tone emphasis. The sadness of the final couplet is therefore a combination of the
accumulated sense of impossibilities and the quietness of this final example.
In choosing to emphasise certain absurd aspects via oral means, Henri adds something to the
spoken version which is not obvious in the printed text, perhaps guiding the audience in
interpreting meaning by highlighting particular elements. ‘Without You’ is a list poem,
switching between metaphors of how much worse it would be or feel if the addressee were
not around – such as the prosaic, ‘Without you every morning would be like going back to
work after a holiday’ or the romantic transformative imagining of the everyday, ‘Without
you plastic flowers in shop windows would just be plastic flowers in shop windows’ (TMS1,
68
See Chapter Four, p. 153 for an analysis of the same poem with a musical accompaniment, used to
emphasise similar elements.
111
17) – and lines which appear to indicate the opposite – ‘Without you every musician in the
world would forget how to play the blues’ (TMS1, 17). Unpacking this sentence indicates
that the blues, a melancholy music genre, would not be used, whereas one would expect that
the blues would be needed without one’s lover. The random placements of the less romantic
implications are caught up in the flow of the poem’s majority of positives, but create
moments of turbulence. Henri’s reading on the Penguin Audio Cassette guides the audience,
as we have seen in ‘Tonight at Noon’, cuing in the audience’s attention to the ‘point’ of each
line – such as the plastic flowers that had special meaning to the couple that would ‘just be
plastic flowers’ without her. Henri’s reading uses deliberate pauses or emphasis: such as
getting a fine for being ‘in possession of … curry powder’ or ‘Without you Sunshine
breakfast would only consist of cornflakes’. The vocal expression of the lines is particularly
important in this poem as the images are not conventionally romantic. The line ‘Without you
I’d probably feel happy and have more money and time and nothing to do with it’ (TMS1,
17) is open to the interpretation that, in some ways, he would be better off without her.
However, in the reading, Henri reads this list with an abrupt change of tone at ‘and nothing
to do with it’, as if realising that this would not actually be a good outcome. The poem fades
out, with his voice getting quieter across the last section, ending: ‘no night/no
morning/there’d be no city no country/ Without you’ (TMS1, 18). This technique is used
more obviously at the end of ‘In the Midnight Hour’, where Henri repeats this title phrase a
number of times, getting quieter at each repetition, an effect which does not exist on the
page. It is a little like a record which has reached its end constantly repeating the final
moments and fading out, giving the poem an ethereal quality.
As noted earlier, both live readings and recordings are ways of presenting a definite ‘voice’
for a particular work. It is hard not to hear ‘the voice’ as ‘the voice’.69 The idea of
‘individual voice’ and a personal style of performance is one which appears in many reviews
of readings. Adrian Mitchell described Patten’s reading voice as having ‘all the colours of a
melancholic alto sax’,70 while Michael Horovitz calls it ‘his plangent erotic
saxophonetrance’.71 A reviewer of a live show in 1972 referred to Patten as having a
‘scratchy little voice’: ‘Words were sometimes unimportant, the impact was the way in
which Brian Patten’s scratchy little voice created sounds which could have told his love-
69
Indeed, when discussing issues of authenticity in pop music, the sociomusicologist Simon Frith
believes that ‘we hear singers as personally expressive.’ Simon Frith, Performing Rites: On the value
of popular music (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), p. 186, author’s italics.
70
Adrian Mitchell, cited in Phil Bowen, A Gallery To Play To: The Story of the Mersey Poets (Exeter:
Stride, 1999), p. 104.
71
Michael Horovitz, ‘Afterwords’, in Children of Albion: the poetry of the Underground in Britain,
ed. by Michael Horovitz (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1969), p. 328.
112
tales without intelligent words.’72 This emphasis on the sound of the expression clearly
accords with Tsur’s ‘poetic mode’, the liminal space where words can also be treated as
sounds. McGough’s voice is also very distinctive in his recordings, particularly in his pace
and speech rhythm. In his autobiography, McGough refers to his childhood habit of speaking
too quickly:
over the years and with practice I have learned how to r-e-a-d-a-l-o-u-d more slowly,
taking my time and breathing properly, but in conversation, when that part of the
brain that signals speech receives the impulse to form sounds in the mouth,
somehow the words and images all become jumbled up like flotsam on a wave that
crashes down on the beach. Writing, of course, is one way of cleaning up the beach,
but even my writing style is staccato.73
This is from a chapter titled ‘runningallthewordstogether’, which is a characteristic of his
writing style, derived in part from e. e. cummings. Sometimes words are run together
because they present a single image; at other times it is representative of his speech rhythm
patterns.74 Taking ‘At Lunchtime, A Story of Love’ as an example, we have, on the page ‘the
younglady in the greenhat’ who says it is ‘tooearly in the morning and toosoon/ after
breakfast’ (TMS1, 69) to make love. This poem was recorded for both the Scene LP and the
Penguin Audio Cassette, and is a good example of McGough’s oral expression. Middleton
noted in his analysis of Jackie Kay reading ‘Brendan Gallacher’ that ‘it turns out that the
page layout is not a good guide to the oral sounding of the poem’,75 and in these records
McGough ignores the page layout’s line endings, reading the poem as if it were prose – a
‘story of love’, about how, ‘this being a nuclearage, the world was going/ to end at
lunchtime’ so the bus passengers might as well ‘makelove’ (TMS1, 69).
His breaths are clearly audible, usually aligned with the commas which separate the phrases
in the printed poem, but the hurried delivery implies that he needs these little pauses to catch
his breath. Both recordings differ from the printed text – for example the Scene LP says ‘i
started to makelove’, ending on a down note at the end of a sentence, instead of elaborating,
as the Penguin Audio Cassette does, with the end of that phrase ‘with all my body’. The
pauses for breath come at the ends of sentences, and it may be that the end of this phrase is
cut on the Scene LP because he cannot fit it into one breath unit. Emphasis is also used: the
Penguin Audio Cassette version highlights that ‘the world was going/ to end at lunchtime’
72
Archive clipping, Henri K/13, ‘With Mersey poets yer gorra listen ’ard!’, Standard Recorder, 22
December 1972. It is also interesting that this review (from a local Basildon newspaper) also seeks to
represent Scouse pronunciation in its vernacular title.
73
McGough, Said, p. 59.
74
Henri, as an artist, often runs words together to create a single image, such as the ‘navyblue
schooldrawers’ of the daughters of Albion (TMS1, 55).
75
Peter Middleton, ‘The Long Biography of the Poem’, Textual Practice, 18 (2004), 167-83, p. 13.
113
(TMS1, 69, my emphasis), with both readings continuing seamlessly across the line break
here and elsewhere. McGough also uses asides and other variations in pitch and tone in the
Penguin Audio Cassette version, in a conversational style – just as in the Scene LP, he reads
the poem in sentences rather than stopping at the line breaks. His ‘staccato’ delivery is also
evident at the end of the poem, which breaks into a list – beginning ‘And the next day’
(TMS1, 70) – each read with an audible intake of breath at the beginning of each line.
McGough speeds through the six lines much faster than those around them. He also varies
his pitch greatly, significantly changing the meaning from the printed text. The printed text
ends this section with a full stop:
it was a pity that the world didn’t nearly
end every lunchtime and that we could always
pretend.
(TMS1, 69-70)
In the Penguin Audio Cassette, McGough clearly gives the phrase an exclamation mark,
lightening his tone to go with the frivolous nature of what he is saying. The same lightness
of tone exists in the Scene LP for the salient information of the final lines:
people pretended that the world was coming
to an end at lunchtime. It still hasn’t.
Although in a way it has.
(TMS1, 70)
In this recording, the pitch of the phrase rises for ‘in a way’ before falling again for ‘it has’.
This picks out ‘in a way’ as separate, and emphasises the absurdity of the poem’s premise –
that if the world was ending at lunchtime, people would do things that they did not have time
to regret.76 McGough’s use of pause and phrasing in these two recordings of ‘At Lunchtime,
A Story of Love’ are typical of his performative utterances.
McGough played with the notion of ‘performing authorship’ in his ‘Letter from the Poet’
(which appears at the opening of his autobiography). This begins by telling the ‘audience’
that:
I apologise sincerely for being unable to attend this evening’s performance. Owing
to the pressure of work, an increasing sense of unreality, and the fear of drowning in
a sea of upturned faces, I have employed an out-of-work actor to impersonate me.77
This actor will read and ‘generally keep up the poetic image’, the letter continues,
impersonating McGough’s ‘nervous mannerisms’.78 It is intentionally humorous (set out as a
76
There is also a serious issue behind the poem, the fear of nuclear war. This was important for Henri
too – ‘Bomb Commercials’ will be discussed in Chapter Five, p. 211-13. See also Jeff Nuttall’s
decision to name his book about the 1960s Bomb Culture.
77
McGough, Said, p. 1.
78
McGough, Said, p. 1.
114
formal letter sent from ‘Dunrhymin’’), but it also draws attention to the idea that an authorial
presence is required for a poetry reading. The need for a physically present author for a live
reading is matched by that author’s need for a physically present audience. Being aware of
one’s audience also means that there can be some control over the audience’s experience.
Control of the audience’s reactions and interpretations comes not only from the way of
reading the text of the poem itself but also from the spoken interactions with the audience
between poems. Patten’s third of the Penguin Audio Cassette includes explanations and
speech between the actual poems, which is unusual for a studio recording. Patten chooses to
highlight how young he was when he wrote the poems he is reading – this is, after all, a 30th
anniversary recording. Introducing ‘Party Piece’, he says: ‘I scribbled this next poem when I
was walking home from an all-night party when I was 15. It’s one of the earliest in this
selection’. The audience is therefore aware not only of the content – this all-night party
could be the one that features in the poem – but also of how young Patten was when he
attended that party. ‘Party Piece’, for Peter Barry, is an example of Patten’s ‘verbal
dexterity’, and, whilst I agree that this kind of writing cannot be ‘wholly performancedependent’, there are elements which are brought out in reading it aloud.79 In all recordings
which I have heard, Patten lowers his voice for the ending, contrasting the humour of
making ‘gentle pornography with one another’ with the sadness implicit at the end, where
‘all there was between them then/ was rain’ (TMS1, 95). This also contrasts with the
audience’s expectations from his introduction – the account of the ‘all-night party’ becomes
sinister in the poem, when, after its end, ‘the dawn creeps in,/ Like a stranger’ (TMS1, 95).
Introductory notes and comments are common in live readings. They help to frame the
poems, both by literally framing what is to come in some kind of context, but also by
pointing out the differences between ‘regular speech’ and the ‘poetic mode’. For example,
Heather Solomon’s article about a 1973 reading described Henri’s reading of a particular
poem thus:
Throughout the readings, Henri moved to the rhythm of his poetry, eyes closed,
creating the images of his words in his mind. ‘I need an American accent to attempt
to do this one. This is a talking blues, you see. They have to be done in a kind of
country and western sort of accent. This is an English country and northwestern
poem written on Boxing Day morning. It’s called Adrian Henri’s Talking After
Christmas Blues.’ The poet carried this off beautifully and brought the house
down.80
79
Peter Barry, Contemporary British Poetry and the City (Manchester: Manchester University Press,
2000), p. 143.
80
Archive clipping, Henri K/11, Heather Solomon, ‘Adrian Henri: Poet’ The Georgian, 2 November
1973.
115
This record of the experience not only highlights Henri’s presence and his physicality, but
also gives us an example of how he chose to present this particular poem (which will be
discussed in Chapter Four). The audience gets an explanation of both the content and the
context (perhaps necessary because of his affectation of an accent). Finally, Solomon also
records the audience’s reaction to the reading, showing the importance of their presence as
well as Henri’s own. It can be made clear, as seen above with epigraphs, what is and isn’t
part of the actual poem by how the poet uses tone, but the comments and chatter between
poems is another way of communicating with the audience (outside of the text) and adds to
the whole experience of each live event.
Crafting a ‘set list’ is also another way of controlling how the audience receives the poems.
The Liverpool Archives hold many of Henri’s notebooks and other miscellaneous writings
alongside his manuscript drafts. One such ‘miscellaneous note’ is a handwritten sheet on
which it appears Henri has written notes for a reading. He has written: ‘I never choose the
programme of poems I read until the last moment, preferring to vary the choice according to
my mood, that of the audience, its size, and the sort of setting we are in’ (Henri M/6/3). This
explanation of his motivations – with a clear emphasis on the audience and the setting – is
followed by more handwritten text, written, it seems, in preparation for a particular event,
which includes the statement:
Tonight I will read some well-known ‘old favourites’ from Penguin Modern Poets
No. 10 ‘The Mersey Sound’: poems like ‘Love Is...’, ‘Tonight at Noon’ … and
‘Without You’.
(Henri M/6/3)
It is unclear whether this is to be read – perhaps in a programme – or if Henri would
announce this, but the explanation is interesting. The phrase ‘old favourites’ was added in
after the rest of the sentence was written, and indicates that he is aware of the reactions his
poems receive. This is also evident at a reading as part of the 30th anniversary tour of The
Mersey Sound, which was recorded by the BBC. There are clear murmurs of recognition
when Henri announces poems such as ‘Love Is’ (‘another sixties love poem’) and ‘Bat
Poem’ (‘this is my, um, superhero poem’), with the latter prompting laughter throughout,
showing that reading an ‘old favourite’ will please the audience (Patten/9/1/12).
It is, of course, not only the poet who influences the interpretations of a poem, but also the
consensus of the audience, another difference between silent reading and the live event. In
the 1980s, Egon Hansen, of the Department of Stress Research in Stockholm, ran
experiments on the ‘emotional stream of affect’, finding that ‘emotional feelings may be
contagious’, and furthermore that they ‘may be passed on to one person from one or more
116
other persons, or from a work of art’, meaning that not only the poem and the reading of it
can affect the audience, but also that members of the audience can influence each other.81 On
the page, there are no stage directions to indicate a punchline, but, at a live event, the
audience’s laughter may prompt those who are not laughing to reappraise their own
interpretation. For example, introducing his solo poetry-reading section of the Scaffold’s
concert at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in 1968, McGough provides some cues for the
audience’s interpretation. After reading three short comic poems, he says he will ‘change the
mood slightly with three, um two, poems ... failed love poems’.82 Expectations could either
be for something amusing or depressing, depending on the interpretation: ‘poems about love
which are failures’ or ‘poems about failed love’. The last poem – perhaps the subject of the
slip ‘three, um two’ – is ‘Let Me Die a Youngman’s Death’. There is a murmur from the
audience at the announcement of this poem, intimating that they have heard the poem
before. The poem is an extended plea to die ‘a youngman’s death’:
not a clean & inbetween
the sheets holywater death
not a famous-last-words
peaceful out of breath death
(TMS1, 91)
By reading the poem aloud (either solo or with music, as will be discussed in the next
chapter), certain features are brought to the audience’s attention. The drawn-out vowel
sounds of ‘clean & inbetween the sheets’ are followed by a rushed jumble of phrases serving
as descriptions for the kind of death he wishes to avoid, ending with the satisfying,
concluding internal rhyme of ‘out of breath death’. The following three stanzas list examples
of how McGough might die at various ages, increasing in both age and sensationalism:
Or when I’m 104
& banned from the Cavern
may my mistress
catching me in bed with her daughter
& fearing for her son
cut me up into little pieces
& throw away every piece but one
(TMS1, 91)
The audience laugh at several points in the Queen Elizabeth Hall recording, including at
both the idea of being banned from the Cavern at 104 and at the final two lines of the
quotation above – the latter causing a laugh which extends into the next stanza. The
consensus of the audience is clear here in interpreting this poem as humorous. McGough
reads each stanza, each new idea, with great relish, emphasising elements which are not
81
Egon Hansen, Stress, Stream of Affect, and Emotions: Exploratory Experiment with Poetry Reading
(Stockholm: Stress Research Section Karolinska Institutet, 1996), p. 28-9.
82
The Scaffold, Live at the Queen Elizabeth Hall 1968, prod. by Eleanor Fazan (Cherry Red Records,
ACMEM63CD, 2006). The Scaffold will be discussed in more detail in Chapter Four.
117
obvious on the printed page. For example, in his reading of: ‘Or when I’m 104/ & banned
from the Cavern’ (TMS1, 91), the emphasis is on ‘banned’, rather than on the name of the
famous Liverpool club. In contrast, in his reading of the poem on the Penguin Audio
Cassette, his voice contains no amusement during these lines. Both readings pause before the
final word ‘death’ – which is not represented in the layout of the poem in print – showing
some consistency in his vocalisation of the poem. The 1968 recording has a far more intense
range of emotional tones, with, for example, the final word being almost whispered in
contrast to the opening declamation. It is a much more forceful delivery – perhaps
influenced by McGough’s own feelings about the poem: he was 30 in 1968, but 60 in 1997.83
As well as the way in which an individual poem is announced, a poet can structure his whole
set to have certain effects. For example, Patten’s 2010 Bluecoat reading was deliberately
(and comically) structured as: ‘a short journey through childhood, adolescence, schooldays,
early love poems and later love affairs, infidelity, divorce, growing older, aging, death, and,
if we have time, I’ll throw in the afterlife as well.’84 In Henri’s notebooks there are many
instances of set lists with notes attached. One page of notes for a reading at the Blue Angel
(with the Liverpool Scene) has notes showing a consideration of emotional affect (fig 3.3).
Henri has written a numbered list, and to the right of the titles of songs, sketches, and poems,
he has made notes on the emotions evoked. So, his ‘The New “Our Times”’ is ‘funny’,
opening the set, with a bracketed section of pieces both ‘lyrical’ and ‘sad’. This does not
necessarily contradict the ‘miscellaneous note’ quoted above, where Henri wrote that he
made up his ‘programme of poems’ at the last minute, because it is for a group performance,
perhaps requiring structure ahead of time. It also indicates increasing professionalization,
with Henri changing his practice as Merseybeat gained popularity and reading tours became
one of his main sources of income. However, Henri still ‘var[ies] the choice’ according to a
range of factors, taking into account the audience and how he can affect it. Interviewed for
the Writers and their Work series, McGough stated that he planned further ahead:
I work out the running order before I go on, I know exactly where I’m starting and
where I’m going to finish before I go on and I work out the running order of what I
read pretty carefully. Every time I do a performance I write down what I’ve read,
what order I’ve read the poems. And on the train going home I work out was it a
good order of things, why didn’t that poem work as well tonight as it should have
83
McGough (now much closer to being 73 than he was when he wrote the poem) has written an
updated version, ‘Not for me a youngman’s death’, which asks to ‘die an oldman’s death’ (Roger
McGough, As Far As I Know [London: Viking, 2012], p. 74). At a reading as part of the 2012
Woodstock Literary Festival, McGough read the two poems one after another, pointing up the link
between the two, and, whilst reading the 1960s poem with the same relish as always, the later poem
was solemner, certainly read at a more leisurely pace.
84
Brian Patten at the Bluecoat ‘Chapter and Verse’ Festival, 13 October 2010.
118
done tonight – it’s in the wrong order, and so I’ll change the order round. That’s
very much a vital part of the process of the performance.
(McGough/13/2/9)
McGough kept his set lists (see the bundle in, for example, McGough/6/17). This shows a
certain professionalism in his attitude towards the shows, and is, furthermore, akin to the
way pop musicians work, with ‘running orders’ for shows.85 What these quotations and
archival pieces clearly show is how much the audience really did figure in the minds of the
poets before, during, and after their engagements with them. The performance of poetry has
been shown here to be a way of layering more meaning than is possible on the page and, as
such, is a crucial aspect in the dissemination of a work. The poems are intended to exist both
on and off the page, with oral expressions providing something that silent reading cannot, in
terms of authorial control and reader interpretation. But there is still more to the live event
than this: a poet reading his own work is not the only way in which the audience can receive
it. A poem can also be read as a multisensory crossmedial performance piece.
COLLABORATION IN PERFORMANCE
The Liverpool Archives hold a number of recordings of stage shows and performances by
these poets, and the audio cassette entitled ‘Liverpool Poets live in Basildon’ (1984) is an
example of just such a performance piece, using a combination of the three poets’ works. 86
Opening with the Beatles’ ‘All You Need Is Love’, the music fades out as Henri reads the
opening of his ‘Poem for Liverpool 8’ from Autobiography, with an opening explanation:
‘The place, Liverpool; the time, 1967…’, setting the scene (McGough/13/1/1/22). It is Henri
who announces the next poem, ‘First Day at School’, written by McGough. All three poets
contribute to this poem: for example, after McGough’s line ‘Waiting for the bell to go’,
Patten says ‘to go where?’, which in the printed text reads as: ‘Waiting for the bell to go. (To
85
The link to pop music is interesting, too, because of their formation as a ‘group’ – linking them
both to the ‘literary group’, as in the social scene of the American Beats, and to the ‘music group’, the
contemporary term used for a band.
86
I note here that the recordings which are available to me (in the Liverpool University Special
Collections and Archives) are almost all post-1960s. Whilst this chapter focuses on the work of the
three Merseybeat poets in that decade, in Liverpool, I am using these later recordings because there is
little audiovisual material available for the 1960s (although I am grateful to Andy Roberts for material
relating to The Liverpool Scene at the very end of the decade). This may be partly because the early
days were not deemed important (whereas later theatre tours such as Words on the Run had
soundboard recordings from the venues themselves), but also because their nature was deliberately
live and transient and spontaneous – see Chapter Five’s discussion of Happenings on this. However,
from conversations with the poets themselves and members of their audiences, I believe that similar
collaborative performances occurred in their readings of the 1960s, and that, even if they were with
different poems, the analysis stands as an example of the fluid nature of the Merseybeat’s ‘total art’
aesthetic.
119
go where?)’.87 Lines such as ‘games that are rough, that swallow you up’, after McGough
mentions playground games, are spoken by Henri or Patten as if asides added to McGough’s
main narrative. The poets dramatize their reading in other ways, adding in a whistle of
surprise after McGough tells of the ‘glassrooms – whole rooms made out of glass –
imagine!’ The final lines of the poem are also dramatized to have additional meaning from
the printed version:
McGough:
Patten:
Henri:
Patten:
Perhaps the teacher will read it for me
Tea-cher?
The one who makes the tea.
Oh!
(McGough/13/1/1/22)
It is as if they are three individual children, and Henri has the answer to Patten’s question. In
McGough’s original poem, this comment about the ‘tea-cher’ is presented as the (single)
child narrator’s own conclusion: ‘Perhaps the teacher will read it for me./ Tea-cher. The one
who makes the tea’ (Glassroom, 8). Immediately after this poem’s end, Patten announces
‘Last day at school’. What follows is his poem ‘Schoolboy’, connected to the previous poem
with this framing phrase, and performed similarly, with all three poets reading lines of
Patten’s poem. This opening, on the theme of school and childhood, blends the three poets’
voices and blurs the lines of authorship between their individual works. This section
discusses a number of examples from archival manuscript and audiovisual material where
the poems have been transported from the page into performance through collaboration:
additional meaning or interpretations can be formed through dramatization; multiple voices
can be used to present different characters; poems can be performed in conversation with
other works.
As this suggests, poems are not stable entities to be read off the page, rather they can be
worked on, post-publication, for shared performance in a variety of ways. Something clearly
happens to a poem in performance in terms of its ownership. Whilst there are clear
indications of the audience’s ‘knowingness’ at various readings (such as those murmurs of
recognition at the Poetry Please recording of The Mersey Sound 30th anniversary tour, which
would imply that they know who wrote which poem), and reading aloud has been discussed
as a way of demonstrating authorship and controlling interpretations in a previous section of
this chapter, in group performance these lines are blurred. A draft of ideas for the 30 th
anniversary tour plays with various ideas for the opening, with each poet taking turns to
describe how they met and possibly reading a relevant poem, but Patten also suggests going
‘upstage for 3 voice poem – if we’ve mentioned Adrian as painter maybe I want to paint
87
Roger McGough, In The Glassroom (Jonathan Cape: London, 1976), p. 8. Further references
appear after quotations in the text as ‘Glassroom’.
120
pictures cd be shared’, and then later, for the main body of the first half of the show he
writes: ‘Main Poems MOSTLY? from The Mersey Sound, a few more shared’ (Patten/5/4).
Sharing poems is exactly what the poets do in that 30th anniversary tour, as well as other
tours around that time. In fact, after this school-montage opening, which uses works by all
three poets and their three voices, Henri introduces the Basildon show by telling the
audience: ‘we do bits together and then we do solo bits’ (McGough/13/1/1/22). This simple
statement sums up the fluid nature of their performances and collaborations.
In the interview for the Writers and their Work programme mentioned previously, McGough
spoke about the benefits of collaborative performance (this was around the time that he was
working on a tour with Patten). Often, in performance, McGough said, ‘people won’t know
who’s written what too much – we’re not saying this is my poem, this is Brian’s poem, we’ll
share the poem, break the poem up’, with the value of this way of working being that:
you can do things with poems that weren’t there before, you can rediscover them for
yourself. It’s often happened that I’ll have a poem that I’ve grown tired of reading,
but I’ll work with Brian, and Brian shares it and it becomes sort of new for me.
(McGough/13/2/9)
There are a wide range of annotated poems in the Archives marked up for shared
performance such as Patten’s ‘Proclamation from the New Ministry of Culture’, from Grave
Gossip (1979) – fig 3.4.88 There is an introductory header segueing into the title: ‘Your
attention please, there now follows a ...’. Here is it easier to show who speaks, as the two
lines written in after the title are colour coded for first ‘R’ and then ‘B’, and it stands to
reason that the colours used will then be for the same speaker in the main body of the text.
So, from a poem on the page written by Patten, the audience receive a duologue – and the
performance is not just oral, but also has a visual dimension, as we can see from the ‘stage
direction’, as it were, included on this sheet: ‘look at each other, conspiratorial smile’, which
is inserted before the final line, and adds a dramatic element which one does not get from the
words on the printed page.
One of the reasons for the use of two voices is to allow a change of pace and emphasis.
‘Proclamation’ uses McGough and Patten’s voices for alternate lines to quicken the pace,
such as in these lines:
The judges can be chosen from amongst yourselves
The honours to be awarded are numerous,
88
As well as the poems discussed here, I have included two other examples of poems marked up for
joint performance in the Appendix: ‘I Studied Telephones Constantly’ (fig 3.5) and ‘Drunk’ (fig 3.6),
both of which contain additional text and textual amendments and changes of speaker.
121
The prizes to be awarded are numerous,
You may write or paint exactly what you wish,
You may say exactly what you wish
About the free spirit of the land.
(Patten/1/1/21/68)
The repetitive structures of two sets of the lines here quoted (honours and prizes being
numerous, and write, paint, say what you wish) are emphasised in this performance by
hearing the same phrases spoken, one after another, by different voices. But these two voices
can also be used in other ways. Patten has added these two lines after the introduction and
title:
R: we are the two government officials
B: who are organising the next gov. arts fes.
(Patten/1/1/21/68)
Patten’s line follows on from McGough’s, here, finishing his sentence. The two government
officials are presenting a united front. Patten’s poem is clearly ironic:
Work in bad taste will be disqualified
Anonymous entries will be ferreted out
Those who do not enter will be considered
Enemies of the free spirit of this land.
From now on the festival is to be an annual event.
(Patten/1/1/21/68)
The colour coding here (see fig 3.4) indicates that this last line will be spoken by the two
together. Rather than celebrating the ‘free spirit of this land’, which is a phrase which
appears three times in Patten’s poem, the intent of this ‘Proclamation’ is, obviously, to find
those who do not conform. By joining the two voices together, lack of freedom is expressed.
A recording of ‘Proclamation’ exists in another group format, with all three poets reading.
Patten introduces the poem in almost the same way: ‘Your attention please, there now
follows a broadcast from the new Ministry of Culture’, which changes the title of the poem
itself from ‘Proclamation’ to ‘broadcast’ (McGough/13/1/1/149). In this instance, the two
additional introductory lines are spoken by McGough and Henri, with Henri’s line coming in
as soon as McGough has finished speaking, following the same ‘united front’ approach of
the previous example. Although it is unclear from this archival material which of these
instances of performance came first, it is interesting to see how similar they are in their
interpretation. For example, both have the two lines ‘You may say exactly what you wish/
About the free spirit of this land’ spoken by the same person, following a series of shorter
exchanges. This affects the pace, acting as a stop to the previous two lines’ anaphora. This
structure – of McGough and Henri building up a set of rhythmic short lines, only to be
stopped by Patten reading a longer sentence across two lines on the page – is repeated again
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later in the live example, and differs in its expression from the manuscript example, where
the two speakers took two lines each, because they have an extra voice to utilise:
Henri:
McGough:
Patten:
Work in bad taste will be disqualified
Anonymous entries will be ferreted out
Those who do not enter will be considered
Enemies of the free spirit of this island
(McGough/13/1/1/149)
These shifts in pace, with Patten always speaking a longer section, are subverted in the final
line of the poem, which is broken into three:
Henri:
McGough:
Patten:
From now on
the festival
is to be an annual event.
(McGough/13/1/1/149)
Instead of speaking the line together as in the manuscript example, which brings Patten and
McGough together as a single entity, the same point – of representing government control
and uniformity – is made here by having each speaker follow on immediately from the last.
The one sentence is not, in fact, broken up in terms of its sense. Whether two or three
government officials, the vocal expression highlights the intent of Patten’s poem in a way
which the printed text cannot: presenting this overarching ‘we’ in more than one voice
serves to heighten the irony of the ‘Proclamation’: the ‘free spirit’ is clearly the opposite, as
is seen both in the actual words being spoken and the vocal expression (‘we’, finishing each
other’s sentences, speaking simultaneously, robotically).
It is interesting that these pages survive, with their crossings-out and changes of personnel,
showing the group’s fluid way of working. It is not set who will do what, but, just as with
the musical collaboration which is discussed in the next chapter, rehearsal will help work out
what is the most effective use of each speaker, what is the most dramatic way of presenting
the poem, what is the most successful use of their alliance.
One of the most significant examples of collaboration for a live performance is McGough’s
‘40-Love’. The poem is about a ‘middle/ aged/ couple/ playing/ ten/nis’, with the words on
the page divided into two columns to represent the ball bouncing between the two tennis
players – breaking up the syllables of words such as ‘ten-nis’ and ‘be-tween’ reaffirms this
(TMS1, 70-1).89 In solo performance, such as the version recorded for the Penguin Audio
Cassette, McGough reads to highlight this idea of the rhythmic bounce of the ball between
partners, deliberately pausing between each line, quickening as the poem progresses. In
group performance McGough uses the other voices available to dramatize the tennis match
89
The visual characteristics of ‘40-Love’ will be discussed further in Chapter Five, p. 194-5.
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further. One example, from the recording of the 1984 Liverpool Poets show in Basildon
(McGough/13/1/1/22), explores the idea of the match further with McGough and Patten
speaking one column each, and the word ‘net’ then spoken by Henri. Having a third person
speak that single word in the phrase ‘the/ net/ will/ still/ be/ be-/ tween/ them’ (TMS1, 70-1)
both highlights the ‘net’ of the tennis match but also further imitates a tennis match, with an
umpire commenting on service (‘net’ service, where the umpire calls ‘let’ to allow a player
to take another serve if their first ball clips the net on delivery). Wordplay (1976), a stage
show written by McGough and performed with John Gorman, Andy Roberts, Lindsay
Ingram, and Victoria Wood, also performs the poem in much the same way: Gorman and
Roberts take the roles of the tennis players, quickening their pace as the poem progresses
(also moving about the stage, as is clear from the background noise on the recording), both
women shout the word ‘net!’, and then McGough quietly speaks the final ‘will still be
between them’ (McGough/13/2/71).
The dramatization of ‘40-Love’ in Words on the Run (a 1995 theatre tour by the Merseybeat
poets, guitarist Andy Roberts, and playwright Willy Russell) is also another example of the
way in which the poets can manipulate audience reception. McGough introduces the poem
with: ‘And now a choral rendition of two major poetical works’ (Patten/9/1/14). Here, Patten
and Henri speak each side of the match as in the Basildon recording, getting faster after
‘ten/nis’, culminating in McGough shouting ‘net!’ before lowering his voice for the final
few words. This set up reproduces the format of the previous examples, but what happens
next colours the audience’s reception. They pause for laughter and applause, but then go
straight into a reading of another McGough poem, ‘Missed’. This poem is not set out on the
page as a match, nor is there any other recording of it in this format that I can find, but for
Words on the Run, Patten, Henri, and McGough each speak lines of the poem, one after the
other. The audience is set up to treat these two poems as linked: first, by McGough’s
introduction before ‘40-Love’: ‘And now a choral rendition of two major poetical works’;
second by their treatment – the poets speaking alternate words/phrases of each poem; and
third, because of the sports link – as ‘40-Love’ relates to tennis, ‘Missed’ also uses a
sporting metaphor for the punchline:
he aimed
low in life
and
missed 90
90
Roger McGough, Holiday on Death Row (London: Jonathan Cape, 1979), p. 35.
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Is the man in the second poem one half of the couple in the first – now ‘divorced/ out of
work’, dissatisfied with his lot in life?
There are other poems with similar divisions and character roles, for which we have audio
records. For example, in the Liverpool Poets show in Basildon discussed above
(McGough/13/1/1/22), Henri invites the audience to join in with the reading of ‘Car Crash
Blues’: ‘It has a one-word chorus which is the one word that is in every pop song ever
written and we would like you to join in with the chorus.’ This is the word ‘baby’ which is
repeated at the end of every phrase in the poem. Henri comments ‘very good’ after the
second attempt. It is interesting to note that there is a small number of respondents at the
first instance, which indicates that they know the poem well enough to know the word
‘baby’ is coming at that point. However, the audience’s participation grows and grows at
each subsequent addition, and when Henri adds in the line: ‘You make me feel like
Basildon, baby’, laughing, the audience also laugh, and the next few lines are broken up with
Henri’s own laughter and the audience’s.
One final example of performative collaboration and how it can add meaning to the printed
work is the performance of McGough’s ‘9 to 5, or Cosy Biscuit’, on the ‘Gifted Wreckage’
audio cassette.91 It begins, pre-text, with these conversational lines:
McGough:
Patten:
Henri:
McGough:
It’s 8pm and we’ve just started work. […] Sometimes when we’re
travelling round, we think how nice it would be to have a proper
job.
So here’s a poem called ‘9-5’
‘9-5, or Cosy Biscuit’
I would ask you to watch out for the neat bit of choreography that
takes part in the middle of the poem. People all over the country are
excited about this.
(McGough/13/1/1/149)
Both Patten and Henri introduce the actual title, for what is a McGough poem. This
announcement sets up the poem’s theme, and prepares the audience for the staging, the
reason for which will become clear. What is particularly interesting about this instance is the
lack of focus on any one of the poets – if one did not know that McGough had written the
poem, it would not be clear that he was the author from this introduction. The poets share the
poem in performance, much like taking lines in any of the other examples discussed here. 92
91
Originally published as ‘epilogue (or cosy biscuit)’, in Roger McGough, Gig (London: Jonathan
Cape, 1973), p. 34. The poem ends the ‘On the Road’ section (introduced as ‘Life on the road with
one of today’s supergroups’, a series of poems named for the towns they were written in or about
whilst on tour with the Scaffold and later GRIMMS), giving it a certain context which McGough’s
introduction in Basildon seeks to replicate.
92
See fig 3.7 for a visual representation of the line break-down for the three poets.
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However, the lines taken by each poet in the first two stanzas are revealed in the second half
of the poem to have been specifically allotted. This poem, which opens ‘What I wouldn’t
give for a nine to five’, switches deftly half way through, jumbling up all the comments
made and items discussed so that it ends, as the title: ‘Ah, what I wouldn’t give for a cosy
biscuit’. What is additional about this poem in performance – and in collaborative
performance particularly – is that the ‘normal’ comments made by each poets in the first half
are jumbled up in the second half in such a way that they each (more often than not) repeat
the same words, even in their new, confused, order. So, for example: Henri longs for
‘Biscuits in the right hand drawer’ and a ‘Glass of beer at lunchtime’, then a ‘Glass of beer
in the right hand drawer’; Patten sees the office as a place for ‘Teabreaks, and typists to
mentally undress’, changing to ‘Teabreaks and a pension to mentally undress’ in the second
half (McGough/13/1/1/149, see fig 3.7). The poets also speak the words with great relish,
these ideas of ‘how nice it would be to have a proper job’, as McGough introduces it. Take
these two lists, for example:
The same faces. Somewhere to hang
your hat and shake your umbrella.
Cosy. Everything in its place.
…
The same 2 kids. Somewhere to hang
your wife and shake your bit on the side.
(McGough/13/1/1/149)
McGough speaks the lines in the first and second instances with the same inflections, the
same tone, in order to heighten the comic effect of the second part as it deconstructs the first.
Collaborative performance can be a mixture of poems in a set, a dividing up of the lines of
an individual poem, or a dramatization involving characters or staging, but whichever form
it takes, these examples show that these poets go beyond what one might normally expect
for a live performance of a poem, turning it into a theatrical experience. This, then, is a
major aspect of this movement which must be considered in critical appraisal: the ability –
and need – to promote poetry off the page into an audiovisual, three-dimensional,
crossmedial experience. Be it via paralinguistic features in solo reading, transposition to
duologue, or wider collaboration, the Merseybeat poets fully exploit the notion of what a
live event can be.
VERBAL PLAY
Earlier in this chapter, I referred to McGough’s self-confessed tendency to speak too
quickly. ‘At Lunchtime’ was used to demonstrate ‘runningallthewordstogether’ where the
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words formed a single image or represented his speech patterns graphically. This tendency is
also evident in the performance of poetry, where it is used for deliberate effect. Slippages of
sound, where the aural effect is more important than the written text, are used by these poets
to play with the spoken word. The choice of title for the 1997 Words on the Run tour
foregrounds this tendency. Adalaide Morris uses the term ‘acoustical slide’,93 Garrett
Stewart refers to ‘verbal slippages’94 or ‘cross-lexical drift’.95 Either way, words frequently
overlap in their vocalisation: the end of one word is held over into the start of the next;
individual letters or syllables are elided or compressed together; aural recall links back to
previous rhyme or assonance; individual’s speech patterns effect the flow; voices lilt and
rush and mumble.
Garrett Stewart’s Reading Voices is concerned with ‘phonemic reading’: ‘to do not with
reading orally but with aural reading’, as in what reading out loud causes to be voiced,
separate from what is actually written down.96 Although Garrett Stewart’s analysis relates to
rhyming words rather than phrases, I believe that his work can be usefully applied here,
alongside Tsur’s theories of orality. Whilst Ong’s observation that ‘sound exists only when
it is going out of existence’97 is true, the listener can also hold on to what Tsur calls ‘auditory
traces’.98 One of Tsur’s examples of a situation where ‘the auditory trace may be enhanced’
is when sounds are ‘continuous and periodical’ – as when a poem contains repetition,
anaphora, or rhyme.99 In such a situation, words are manifestly not only experienced for their
linguistic meaning but also for their sound. This is, in short, the basis of the ‘Poetic
Mode’.100 Repetition of the same phrase forms a sound unit which, when heard again, recalls
the previous instances of that sound – a ‘lexical edging back’.101 The ‘lingering auditory
information about the most recent arrival’, in, for example, Henri’s ‘Love Is’ or ‘Without
You’ can ‘appear to linger on even after the recoding of the acoustic into the phonetic stream
of information’,102 so that the listener is reminded of the main theme of the poem whilst still
comprehending each phrase (joining the ‘Speech’ and ‘Nonspeech’ Modes), and sensing, in
93
Morris, p. 2.
Garrett Stewart, Reading Voices: literature and the phonotext (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1990), p. 2.
95
Garrett Stewart, p. 8.
96
Garrett Stewart, p. 2.
97
Ong, Orality and Literacy, p. 32. ‘I cannot have all of a word present at once: when I say
“existence”, by the time I get to the “-tence”, the “exis-” is gone’ (Ong, Orality and Literacy, p. 91).
98
Tsur, p. 71.
99
Tsur, p. 71.
100
See Tsur’s introduction for a longer definition of the ‘Poetic Mode’: ‘It explains, for instance, the
double – hushing as well as harsh – quality of the sibilants, the relative height and brightness of front
vowels as compared to back vowels, the relative hardness of voiceless consonants, and much more’
(Tsur, p. viii).
101
Garrett Stewart, p. 66.
102
Tsur, p. 37.
94
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hearing the start of that anaphoric phrase, both what will come next and that it will relate
back to what they have heard before.
This is another kind of knowingness, where the audience have expectations of what they will
hear next. The Merseybeat poets play on this not only with repetition but also with their use
of clichés or familiar phrases. Verbal slippages or acoustical slides are utilised here as the
listener supplies what they think will come next. Thus, alongside the example of ‘At
Lunchtime’ given earlier to demonstrate how McGough links words together, there are other
types of word play, which rely on being read aloud for their full force to be appreciated. ‘Let
Me Die a Youngman’s Death’ uses auditory shifts, where syllables are added or subtracted:
at 73 he hopes to be ‘in constant good tumour’, replacing the ‘h’ of ‘humour’ (the expected
final word) with the ‘t’ to form a new meaning, connecting cancer with old age (TMS1, 91).
This doubling of meaning is particularly obvious when read aloud, as the listener supplies
the expected word. Likewise two meanings are formed by the phrase ‘short back and
insides’: as he is in a barber’s shop, we expect the ‘short back and sides’ haircut, but the
‘short back and insides’ also describes the damage the ‘rival gangsters’ have done to him
(TMS1, 91). The comic effect is produced due to what John Hollander describes as ‘our ear
hesitating for a while between patterns’.103
Edward Lucie-Smith includes five different dialogue poems by McGough in The Liverpool
Scene, which demonstrates the importance of wordplay in the initial promotion of this
movement. Consider the following:
Man:
Woman:
M:
W:
Have you got any pet peeves?
Yes, I have a pet peeve. His name is Spot and he lives on a
strict diet.
What of?
Stricts.
(TLS, 75)
The woman’s answers do make a kind of sense, deliberately misunderstanding the man’s
intended meaning, turning the everyday sense through a syntactically possible but
semantically non-sensical interpretation. Many of the sketches which McGough wrote, both
during the 1960s and after, depend on wordplay such as this. ‘Verse Addict’, written and
performed with Patten, uses the conceit that writing poetry is akin to taking drugs. The
sketch is set up in the form of an interview, with McGough as interviewer, talking to an
‘early addict, Mr. Brian Patten’, about how he got involved.104 It includes exchanges such as:
103
John Hollander, Rhyme’s Reason: A guide to English Verse, rev. ed. (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1981), p. 6.
104
A typescript of the sketch is held in the Archives, McGough 1/1/35. The sketch was performed on
a number of occasions, but I refer here to the 1984 Liverpool Poets tour.
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McGough:
Patten:
McGough:
Patten:
Sonnets?
I was doing fourteen lines a night.
Fourteen lines a night!
Sometimes up to fifteen or sixteen.
(McGough/13/1/1/22)
Knowingness is important here, as the joke only works if the audience have knowledge of
both sonnet form and of the terminology of drug use. Later, when Patten mentions getting
into the ‘harder stuff’ like ‘metaphysical poets’, McGough queries ‘Donne?’ and Patten
answers ‘Once or twice, but off with a caution’. This homophone plays on ‘Donne’, the
metaphysical poet, and ‘done’, a colloquialism for being arrested.105
Twisted clichés, mixed metaphors, and acoustic slides are also the basis of many of Henri’s
poems. In Tonight at Noon, Henri includes a section on ‘The reevaluation of the cliché’,
where he defines the cliché as: ‘a living piece of language that has gone dead through
overwork’, but he suggests that it can be ‘energized or revitalized’ (TAN, 80). He goes on to
say that this is done by ‘putting it in an alien context, contradicting its apparent meaning’
(TAN, 80), giving as an example one of McGough’s Summer with Monika poems:
your finger
sadly
has a familiar ring
about it
(TMS2, 102)
Henri also believes that several of his own poems work this way, such as ‘Morning Poem’:
‘I’ve just about reached
breaking point’
he snapped.
(TMS1, 20)
This poem uses a cliché, a well-known phrase, and subverts it with the punning final line,
where ‘snapped’ can be both the dialogue tag referring to a manner of speaking, or an
indication that the speaker has indeed reached (or gone beyond) ‘breaking point’. In the third
and fourth versions of The Mersey Sound this poem is part of an extended group of ‘Short
Poems’, almost all of which contain some form of verbal joke or reimagined phrase or
cliché, such as ‘Love Poem’: ‘“I love you” he said/ With his tongue in her cheek’ (TMS3,
54). ‘Football Poem/Goodbye Poem’, from New Volume, recalls the Rodgers &
Hammerstein song Ýou’ll Never Walk Alone, from the musical Carousel, a number one for
Mersey Beat group Gerry and the Pacemakers in 1963, and co-opted by Liverpool (Henri’s
favourite team) as a football anthem. The poem reads in its entirety: ‘You never wore/
105
John Donne also played on his name in ‘A Hymn To God The Father’: ‘When Thou hast done,
Thou hast not Donne,/ For I have More’ (John Donne, The Complete Poems, ed. by Robin Robbins
[Harlow: Longman, 2010 rev. ed.], pp. 576-9, p. 577).
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cologne’ (NV, 66). The homophone pun is clear when the lines are spoken: the ‘c’ of
‘cologne’ connecting back to ‘wore’ to sound out ‘walk’ and ‘alone’, in an acoustic slide.
This poem is clearly an example of an instance where the audience is expecting to hear the
rest of the phrase, and, indeed, it depends on that knowledge. Henri also uses other known
phrases, such as in ‘Travel Songs’, where he writes of ‘Beautiful girls who/ can’t tell stalks
from buttercups’ (TAN, 7), playing on the advertising slogan of Stork margarine, which
claims that you ‘can’t tell stork from butter’.106
Garrett Stewart sees advertising puns as ‘in every sense arresting’: ‘Grabbed, we are to stop
short, go back. If we get it, they’ve got us: that’s the logic.’107 This is true too of the
Merseybeat poets. In ‘getting’ the joke, the audience form a sense of community, just as
with the example cited earlier of ‘Adrian Henri’s Last Will and Testament’, where the
intention of the poet is to form an alliance with his audience. On the Wellingborough
Bootleg recording, Henri introduced his poem ‘Robins’ thus:
It’s um just coming up to Christmas, and those of you familiar with my oeuvre will
know that there’s an awful lot of Christmas poems – French for egg [laughter] – an
awful lot of sad Christmas poems.
(Patten/9/1/14)
The ‘French for egg’ comment calls back to ‘oeuvre’, which is itself emphasized with an
over-the-top French accent. The comment is said as an aside, and feels like an off-the-cuff
response to the audience’s response to the word ‘oeuvre’ itself, an explanation, but is also a
joke, an inclusive knowing piece of on-stage banter, drawing the audience in. The laugh
comes precisely from the fact that they know ‘oeuvre’ is not the French for egg, and he
knows this too, while mocking himself for the pretention of using the French word. This
chapter has already discussed ways in which the poets control interpretations or cue the
listener in to particular meanings, but, here, ‘knowingness’ is used in that gap between the
audience and the poet in order to assert knowledge and understanding.
Another kind of knowingness is evident in two poems which refer obliquely to potential
unwanted pregnancy: as we have already seen, in ‘Mrs. Albion’ the daughters are ‘worrying
about what happened/ worrying about what hasn’t happened’ (TMS1, 55), and in ‘Don’t
Worry, Everything’s Going To Be All Right’ he tells the addressee:
Don’t worry
About what happened last night
Everything’s going to be all right
106
This same advertising slogan is used again for a different comic effect in ‘Bomb Commercials’ –
see Chapter Five, p. 213.
107
Garrett Stewart, p. 10.
130
They’ll give you contraceptive pills shaped like jelly-babies with your
milk at playtime
(TLS, 24)
On the Scene LP the audience laugh comes, crucially, after ‘what happened last night’ rather
than at the end of the whole section – it is only in the last line that the reason for worrying is
actually explained, but the audience already know to what he is referring. This is the case
with many of these verbal plays. The audience need not only to ‘get’ the joke but also to
show that they get it. Examples have been given of many instances where the poet has cued
the ‘punchline’ or ‘point’ of a line, with a pause before, or an emphasis on, that word or line,
or particular interpretations have been forced through choices in the phrasing of speech, but
the audience also have to acknowledge and respond to this for the poem to be a success.
Thus, McGough’s ‘For You, Everything’s Gonna Be All Right’, contains a number of jokes
about contemporary figures, and on the Scene LP the audience laughter is in
acknowledgement of their understanding of McGough’s puns and plays on double meanings
of phrases, such as:
The queen will head the bill
at the London Palladium
Val Parnell will foot the bill
at the London Palladium
(TLS, 22)
This is a form of common cultural referencing, used in order to connect with the audience.
The poets gain the audience’s attention either by placing known phrases in a poetic context
or by subverting their expectations in the ‘reveal’. For Henri, ‘poetry must relate to everyday
life and language, to common experience and shared assumptions, and yet provide “the
sound of surprise”, the impact of something heard as if for the first time’ (TAN, 81). Verbal
play is clearly, therefore, at its most effective in the live event, where the poet can see and
hear his audience’s reactions. Common cultural referencing through verbal play – alongside
the use of music and musicians (Chapter Four) and adverts and artists (Chapter Five) – is
connected to control and knowingness through reciprocal flow of understanding between the
poet and his audience.
CONCLUSION
As a sixth former at Manchester Grammar in 1969, Geoff Ward asked Henri to come and
read at the school. Ward describes the event as follows:
I didn’t feel we were getting a censored reading, or a talking-down reading, I
thought he was doing ‘a reading’, seriously, as he would have done at a club or on
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stage. Things were not being missed out because they were unsuitable. There’s a lot
of policing about what we’re meant to read at that age.108
This is exactly what this chapter has been trying to provide evidence for: the importance of
live readings to these poets, considerations for connecting to a specific audience, and the
performance of poetry as a means of dissemination. However, many of the critics of this
movement have seen the live event in a negative light. Grevel Lindop believes that
interrelation with the audience has a potential threat:
It presents the public – any public – with a temptation it cannot withstand, the
temptation of having its own attitudes, its concealed anxieties and its complacencies,
flattered by the poet. Not only the poet’s subject matter, but his vocabulary, his very
figures of speech, will be affected for the worse, because in bowing to his audience
he is joining the whole throng of less scrupulous word-mongers whose daily
business is to breed complacency and propagate a false vision of the world.109
These poets clearly do seek an instant connection with their audience, and reading and
responding to that audience in that moment is important. However this is not the end of the
process. An instant connection does communicate an instant version of the poem, but further
readings will provide new insights: one can return to the poems (in other verbal expressions
or the printed text) and experience them again. Furthermore, Lindop’s comment could also
apply to any poetry – many audiences attend poetry readings because they want to hear their
attitudes flattered. However, Merseybeat poetry is not about ‘bowing’ to the audience, but
about taking their responses into account so that lines of communication can be created.
They are not ‘joining’ the ‘less scrupulous word-mongers’ but subverting them. That
specific performance of a poem produces a unique version which cannot be repeated, but is
part of the network of instances which make up a poem’s public life. And even when the
audience does indeed affect the poet, it is not necessarily ‘for the worse’, as Lindop assumes,
but rather:
When I started doing readings I used to find sometimes that I’d written bits in older,
i.e., pre-reading, poems that I couldn’t say. Obviously these were altered in the
reading. The interesting thing is that in every case this improved the purely literary
value of the line or phrase – it was simpler, clearer, more direct.
(TAN, 69)
Moreover, as Peter Barry shows in his in-depth analysis of McGough’s ‘Limestreetscene
’64’ (discussed in Chapter One), this need to communicate doesn’t exclude complexities in
108
Interview with Geoff Ward, February 2013.
Grevel Lindop, ‘Poetry, Rhetoric and the Mass Audience: The Case of the Liverpool Poets’, in
British Poetry Since 1960: A Critical Survey, ed. by Grevel Lindop and Michael Schmidt (Oxford:
Carcanet, 1972), pp. 92-106, p. 106.
109
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the poems. There are ‘linguistically implied elements of cultural sophistication’110 and
common cultural references, all bound up in the loco-specifics of the titular Lime Street:
St. George’s Hall
black pantheonic
like a coalman’s wedding cake
(TLS, 15)
The poem is a ‘dialogic mixture’ of registers and referents, which McGough would have
expected his audience to understand.111 Henri also approaches his audience with the intent of
reaching them on the same level, bringing poetry into the realm of the everyday, but without
condescension. In fact, this desire to connect can also cause the audience to inspire the poet.
Peter Finch, cited at the beginning of this chapter as being inspired by Henri’s performances,
also published Henri in his little magazine Second Aeon several times. The poems included
in volume twelve come with a postscript: ‘Lucy is a girl who said you couldn’t write poems
about the kind of subjects they were given at school: these are 3 of them’. 112 Henri takes the
ordinary situations suggested by the titles of these poems and transforms them. ‘A Sunny
Afternoon’, for example, is not about a sunny afternoon, but conflates several different
afternoons into one poem:
Crammed dark club hot bodies loud music
Following the movements of your body
on muddy paths through cornfields
Ovenhot windbreath through the streets of New York
Tiny movements in the silence under hedges
White summer
Jimmy Page bringing the sun down
over
Darkening spires and Georgian rooftops 113
The poem is complex, referring back on itself and picking up on new images or memories
over the course of nine lines. The ‘hot bodies’ of the club are revisited in the ‘ovenhot
windbreath’ of summertime New York two lines later, but also segue into the ones
immediately following, on a different afternoon, where the awareness of the ‘body’ comes in
a ‘cornfield’. The club is ‘dark’, inside in the afternoon, and it may be that the reference to
‘Jimmy Page’ is music from the club, but in these last three lines, it is also ‘darkening’ in
another city (‘Georgian rooftops’ suggests Liverpool – as Henri uses the architectural term
as a characteristic in many of his ‘Liverpool 8’ poems – or perhaps somewhere else, but
almost certainly not New York). Over these lines we have urban and rural, dark and light,
110
Barry, p. 140.
See Barry, pp. 140-41.
112
Adrian Henri, ‘Poems’, in Second Aeon, 12 (1970), p. 37.
113
Adrian Henri, ‘Poems’, in Second Aeon, 12 (1970), p. 37.
111
133
noise and quiet, all representative in their own way of a summer afternoon, from at least two
different experiences.
This chapter, and the next two, demonstrate how much the Merseybeat poets value the live
event in all its forms as a tool for communication. Henri’s desire to communicate is
inextricably linked to his aesthetic – a deliberate mix of both the ordinary and the
extraordinary:
I don’t write down. There’s a kind of Ockham’s Razor thing that I use, which is ‘is
there a simpler or better, one-syllable way of saying this? Is there a way that’s going
to communicate with a greater number of people than the way you’ve just thought
of?’ The crucial decision is the communication factor. If I leave in something
obscure it’s because I feel it’s absolutely vital.114
The next chapter will continue to discuss performance, but will address performance
accompanied by music, or performance that is specifically musical in form. It will consider
many of the same poems as this chapter, precisely because, as stated in the Introduction, the
mixing of artforms and modes of expression in this movement means that no one work is
fixed to a particular format - and, indeed, should not be. Entertainment is crucial for these
poets, and by using live performance (with their own voices, as here, or with the addition of
music) they could both attract and keep an audience. Because, after all, as Henri says: ‘If
what I’m saying is worth saying it’s worth saying to as many people as possible.’115
114
115
Mike Davies, Conversations (Birmingham: Flat Earth Press, 1975), p. 4.
Davies, Conversations, p. 6.
134
CHAPTER FOUR: MUSIC IN MERSEYBEAT
Liverpool is a city of sounds and music.1 It is via the aural realm, with ‘foghorns and
hooters’ (A, 12), that the docks are evoked at the beginning of Adrian Henri’s
Autobiography, and, through the docks, a strong musical tradition – from Celtic folk through
Country & Western to American Blues – has been brought into the city. For the period
within which these poets were working the Mersey Beat or Mersey Sound bands are an
obvious context, as the same venues host poetry and music, both separate and fused. It is not
surprising, then, that from Henri’s dedication of ‘Tonight At Noon’ to ‘Charlie Mingus and
the Clayton Squares’ (TMS1, 11) to Brian Patten’s ‘Interruption At The Opera House’, a
wide variety of musical styles and genres appear in the work of the Merseybeat poets.
Liverpool’s musical past is full of overlapping and concurrent histories, with country, folk,
jazz, skiffle, and rock’n’roll (as well as light music and classical) all playing significant roles
in the creation of a local popular culture.2 Michael Brocken laments the lack of attention to
the city’s complete musical history, believing it to be ‘principally because these particular
“roads” do not, at first examination, appear to lead to the Beatles (but of course in a
roundabout way they do)’.3 It is the phrase in parentheses which is significant: all aspects of
Liverpool’s ‘hidden histories’ feed into the explosion of art, music, and culture of the
1960s.4 This chapter seeks to place Merseybeat as a literary movement which both
recognises, and has strong links with, the convergence of various music scenes.
Social listening is one of the most important aspects of musical consumption in Liverpool,
be it listening to recorded music or playing together live. Both sailors and the Cunard Yanks
(as discussed in Chapter One) present a key point of access to recorded music, particularly
because of the strong transatlantic links from Liverpool which brought American music into
1
For a discussion of sounds and noise as well as music in Henri’s poetry, see Helen Taylor, ‘“Reelin’
an’ a-rockin’”: Adrian Henri and 1960s Pop’, East-West Cultural Passage 12.1 (2012), 109-25.
2
Classical music in Liverpool is easy to overlook, when compared to the more prominent popular
music scenes, yet the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra (founded 1840, the oldest symphony
orchestra in the UK) is an important part of the city’s musical heritage. Whilst the Orchestra was
founded as an elite society, it has, since the 1940s, consistently provided community and schools
events as well as a full programme of concerts open to the general public every year.
3
Michael Brocken, Other Voices: Hidden Histories of Liverpool’s Popular Music Scenes, 1930s1970s (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010), p. 5-6.
4
I disagree with Brocken that these histories are ‘hidden’: whilst wider national interest may only
have been piqued by rock’n’roll, music was very much a part of everyday life in Liverpool. For
research on the variety of musical scenes in the city see, for example, Kevin McManus, ‘Nashville of
the North’ Country Music in Liverpool (Liverpool Sounds Series) (Liverpool: Institute of Popular
Music, 1994), and the work of Sara Cohen, such as Sara Cohen, Decline, Renewal and the City in
Popular Music Culture: Beyond the Beatles (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), as well as other works
mentioned in this chapter.
135
the city. For example, Paul McCartney’s introduction to Liverpool Wondrous Place says that
there was ‘a massive amount of music to be heard’, with ‘all these influences, from your
home, the radio, the sailors and the immigrants, Liverpool was a huge melting pot of
music.’5 Later on, as John Cornelius’s memories of the bars and drinking clubs of Liverpool
8 suggests, the jukebox appears as a site of dissemination or contact with a wide variety of
music. In O’Connor’s Tavern, which Henri refers to as ‘noisy Jukebox O’Connor’s’ (A, 31),
the ‘juke-box loudly pumped out the latest progressive rock and black music’.6 Charlie
Landsborough, a country musician from Birkenhead (already cited in Chapter One on this
subject) paints this picture of his exposure to country music:
My brothers of course were returning from their voyages with the first guitars I’d
ever seen and wonderful country music ... They’d often arrive home with a group of
friends and a crate of beer and I’d sit enthralled as they laughed and sang the hours
away. 7
This is a typical recollection, but two strands are particularly worth noting. First, the idea of
social listening is foregrounded in the familial connection: the explicit reference to listening
and singing as a group appears time and again in recollections of this era. Second – and
connected to this fact – is the phrasing of ‘My brothers of course were returning’: this
implies that Landsborough expects his family connection to the sea to be a familiar
experience.
In Bomb Culture, Jeff Nuttall defines ‘the so-called Mersey beat’ as ‘a Lancashire version of
the heavily negroid Tamla Motown sound’.8 Rock historians such as Allan F. Moore note the
‘stylistic congruence’9 of early British rock with its American antecedents, where British
artists recorded their covers precisely following the originals. Certainly many early bands,
including the Beatles, covered songs in this style. Bands at this time were likely to be
playing dance halls, such as the Grafton, where the emphasis was on playing music that the
5
Paul McCartney, foreword to Paul Du Noyer, Liverpool Wondrous Place: From the Cavern to the
Capital of Culture (London: Virgin Books, 2007), p. xi.
6
John Cornelius, Liverpool 8 (London: John Murray, 1982), p. 35. Michael Brocken also records
O’Connor’s as ‘the first “rock” pub in Liverpool … where from 1969 rock groups took over where
the Liverpool Scene poetry and rock collective had left off’. Furthermore, he states that in the 1970s
the scene there ‘tended to represent the taste cultures of the bohemian area of the city, Liverpool 8’,
congruent with the area the Merseybeat poets knew (Brocken, p. 224-5).
7
http://www.charlielandsborough.com/biography.htm [accessed 1 October 2012].
8
Jeff Nuttall, Bomb Culture (London: MacGibbon & Kee, 1968), p. 132. The Detroit record label’s
name comes from the city’s nickname as ‘Motor Town’ or ‘Motor City’, which gives it another link
with Liverpool in that both Vauxhall and Ford were producing cars in the area at this time (Vauxhall,
Ellsemere Port 1962-present; Ford, Halewood factory 1962-2000).
9
Allan F. Moore, Rock: The Primary Text, rev. edn. (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2001, rev.ed.), p. 73.
136
patrons could dance to – perhaps easier when it was a track they already knew.10 As sets
became more affordable, radio (the American Forces Network, pirate radio, and local radio’s
genre shows) and national television shows (such as Jukebox Jury, the Six-Five Special, or
the Five O’Clock Club) would have been an important site of access for audiences who were
either too young or without the income to go to live music venues, join clubs, or collect
records.11 Easy access to jazz and other genres of music is central to Henri’s common
cultural referencing: when he dedicates ‘Tonight at Noon’ to Charles Mingus and the
Clayton Squares, it assumes the audience’s knowledge of both Mingus’s own Tonight at
Noon album and the local music scene.12 The juxtaposition of these two is interesting: they
represent two different styles of music – an internationally-acclaimed avant-garde jazz
performer and a local rock group – which Henri subtly elides by evoking the ‘individual and
his group’ naming style of many bands of this time.13
Bill Harry, who founded Mersey Beat magazine in 1961, remembers:
an amazing folk scene, too, and the biggest country music scene in Europe. Add the
poetry and the black music scenes, and it was incredible what was happening in that
city. I don’t think it ever happened anywhere else. You get books saying, ‘Oh, as
soon as the Beatles happened, everyone was suddenly on the streets with guitars.’
But the whole thing happened prior to that.14
The ‘whole thing’ is important here: whilst outside media attention came to the city based on
‘Beatlemania’, these various scenes had existed for many years beforehand, both concurrent
and collaboratively. Many venues held different genres of music on different nights of the
week, merging the boundaries of social spaces. The Spinner’s Club, for example, met at
Sampson & Barlow’s before moving to Gregson’s Wells. Sampson & Barlow’s was also
10
Spencer Leigh cites a document kept by the drummer John Cochrane, listing which songs other
groups were performing to ensure that his own band would not duplicate numbers. See Spencer
Leigh, The Cavern: The Most Famous Club In The World (London: SAF, 2008), p. 66.
11
Whilst I disagree with Spencer Leigh’s dismissal of Cunard Yanks as a source of music imports, I
do concur when he highlights Brian Epstein’s NEMS ‘superbly stocked record shop’ as ‘significant’
(Spencer Leigh, ‘Growing up with the Beatles’, in The Beat Goes On: Liverpool, Popular Music, and
the Changing City, ed. by Marion Leonard and Robert Strachan [Liverpool: Liverpool University
Press, 2010], pp. 28-42, p. 35).
12
There is a footnote explaining the title’s source in The Mersey Sound, but this does not appear in
The Liverpool Scene anthology. In the Liverpool University Archive, within a folder marked by Henri
as ‘Poems for P.M.P.10 (1st edition)’, his own fair copy of the poem contains the dedication ‘(for
Charles Mingus)’ (Henri A I.i), but not the (published) explanatory note: ‘The title of this poem is
taken from an LP by Charles Mingus “Tonight at Noon”, Atlantic 1416.’ [TMS1, 11]). An early draft
of the poem, in Notebook C1/5, also has ‘(for Charles Mingus)’ under the title, but without a further
situating comment.
13
For example, the big bands of the 1930s and 1940s as represented by ‘Glenn Miller and his
Orchestra’, and the early rock’n’roll bands such as the aforementioned ‘Gerry and the Pacemakers’.
Furthermore, this is not a simple jazz/rock dichotomy, but rather avant-garde jazz from Mingus is
paired with the Clayton Squares’ self-identification with R&B and soul.
14
Bill Harry, cited in Du Noyer, p. 69.
137
home to Hank Walters’s Black Cat Country club, and the Merseybeat poets’ Monday
readings.15 Likewise, Patten started his own poetry nights at the Green Goose café, which
was a folk venue for much of the week. The cross-fertilization of popular music scenes in
Liverpool occurred simply because the different scenes were available: one could go to see a
specific group or style of music in one venue and return to that venue on subsequent nights
to hear something completely different.
Music was an integral part of the Liverpool scene in the 1960s: the variety of sources and
influences were wide; the venues and outlets were diverse; the networks through which an
audience could experience the music itself were various. What links the recollections listed
throughout this section is the idea of music not just as entertainment, but as a social activity,
as a way of connecting oneself to a community. As seen in Chapter Three, Merseybeat
poetry is characterised by its use of everyday words and phrases. Part of Simon Frith’s
definition of pop songs is that ‘they work on ordinary language’,16 but, at the same time,
singers can draw on ‘non-verbal as well as verbal devices to make their points – emphases,
sighs, hesitations, changes of tone’.17 The Merseybeat poets speak to the audience directly
through ‘ordinary words’ and also through other devices associated with musical
performance: lyrics become something more than just those words through music’s ability to
add extra layers of meaning and emphasis to them. This lies behind the Merseybeat
movement’s focus on the performative act: poetry is lifted off the page through music, but
more crucially by the live presentation of music and words.
MUSIC IN MERSEYBEAT
A distinction must be made at the outset between poems read with a musical backing and
composed songs. Poems can be read against some sort of musical backing, but songs fuse
the words and the music together. Collaboration, too, comes with the music, another aspect
of the Merseybeat movement that has often been ignored. The live event not only
encompasses different media for each instance of a poem’s performance, but also different
people. The key is multiple showings: it is the network of instances, when taken together,
which make up the creative work.
15
See The Mudcat Cafe’s internet forum (discussion and memories of the British folk revival), thread
http://mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=122842#2697649 [accessed 19 October 2012].
16
Simon Frith, ‘Why do songs have words?’, in Lost in Music: Culture, Style, and the Musical Event,
ed. by Aaron Levine White (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1987), pp. 77-106, p. 99, author’s
italics.
17
Frith, ‘Why do songs have words?’, p. 97.
138
Throughout this chapter I shall be making reference to pieces which appear on two albums
in particular. The first is The Incredible New Liverpool Scene LP, already used in Chapter
Three.18 The second album is a double-CD compilation entitled The Amazing Adventures of
The Liverpool Scene, comprised of the original The Amazing Adventures Of... The Liverpool
Scene LP (1968) and other recordings by the band.19 That this became available in 2009 was
entirely due to Andy Roberts’s campaigning for the re-release of the original album as well
as his desire to preserve other unreleased or non-album tracks. These two albums are
important because they record the live, spoken, out-loud, and inherently vocal presentation
of the poetry, and The Liverpool Scene are important because they exemplify the
collaborative nature of Henri’s aesthetic. This group was formed though the weekly
meetings at O’Connor’s Tavern, with the actual band evolving ‘almost by accident’,20
according to saxophonist Mike Evans. The core was Henri, Roberts, Evans (some of whose
poetry is included in The Liverpool Scene), and guitarist Mike Hart.21 The musical style
which The Liverpool Scene used does not fall comfortably into either the ‘rock’ or the ‘jazz’
genres, but instead takes something from each.22 The members of The Liverpool Scene, prior
to their formation as a band, were also involved in Henri’s Events, and what Evans describes
as ‘a series of audacious mixed-media experiments incorporating the three Ps – poetry,
painting, and pop’.23 And although, as Du Noyer points out, ‘rock star was perhaps the least
successful of Adrian Henri’s incarnations’,24 some of The Liverpool Scene’s best material
evolved from Henri’s poems, and I will be discussing those songs precisely because they
form a separate creative site yet are still firmly connected to the printed text and solo
readings.
18
The Incredible New Liverpool Scene LP, prod. by Hal Shaper (CBS, 63045, 1967). Further
references appear in the text as ‘Scene LP’.
19
All references to tracks by The Liverpool Scene are the versions available on The Amazing
Adventures Of… The Liverpool Scene, prod. by John Peel, Sandy Robertson, and The Liverpool
Scene (Esoteric, eclec22138, 2009). Further references appear in the text as ‘Amazing Adventures...
CD’.
20
Mike Evans, Sleeve Notes, Amazing Adventures… CD. Later the group also had a weekly residency
at the Cavern: ‘Wednesday 10th April 1968: Start of a weekly residency for Liverpool Scene’ (Leigh,
The Cavern, p. 169).
21
See www.adrianhenri.com/performer-music-liverpoolscene-gallery.html [accessed 19 October
2012] and Evans’s Sleeve Notes to the Amazing Adventures… CD for images of posters advertising
the group’s performances, photos of performances, and publicity material.
22
Richard D. Lysons has shared with me his extensive unpublished research on The Liverpool
Scene’s gigography, which indicates their broad appeal, supporting, for example, such diverse acts as
Fairport Convention (Roundhouse, London, 4 January 1969), the Roland Kirk Quartet (London
College of Printing, London, 22 February 1969 – Kirk, an avant-garde jazz musician, appears in
Henri’s ‘Me’), and Led Zeppelin (tour, summer 1969).
23
Evans, Sleeve Notes, Amazing Adventures… CD. The Liverpool Scene formed as a band in 1968,
but prior to this Henri often used Mersey Beat groups (such as the Roadrunners and the Clayton
Squares) to accompany his readings. Individual members of these groups also took part in Henri’s
‘Events’, which will be discussed in Chapter Five.
24
Du Noyer, p. 102.
139
Henri’s ‘Love Is’, for example, exists both on the page and aurally as an anaphoric love
poem, but it was also recorded as part of the Scene LP with Roberts backing Henri on guitar,
and later became a part of The Liverpool Scene’s repertoire. With the addition of music, the
poem takes on another layer of meaning: for example, the poem itself does not mention
matrimony, but Roberts’s backing on the Scene LP uses a phrase from Mendelssohn’s
Wedding March. His version of the phrase is slightly syncopated, and his playing falls
between the stanzas read by Henri. The use of this musical citation – which the audience
would have recognised as a popular choice of entrance music for brides – highlights the
absence of marriage in the poem; perhaps that is not, then, what ‘love is’. The effects of
musical accompaniment are therefore subtle: musical citation can emphasize a theme within
the poem; emphasize wording through phrasing (parts where only the speaker can be heard
focus the audience’s attention, while the approaching climax of the poem could be signalled
by a crescendo or other musical touch); or construct another layer of meaning (or inspire
interpretation) through adding what is not there in the original words.
The Liverpool Scene’s version, recorded and released as a single in 1969, opens with a
saxophone line of a similarly syncopated interpretation of the Mendelssohn, but this is then
joined by percussion and other brass instruments, playing throughout the track as Henri
sings. This syncopation plays with Mendelssohn’s piece to subtly poke fun at the institution
of marriage itself, rather than, as it were, playing it straight. Guitar, played by Roberts,
enters after the fourth ‘Love is’ of each stanza, which highlights the fact that there are no
words to this line at each stanza’s end, and also serves to emphasise the anaphoric phrase
‘Love is’. Here music is a way of cuing the audience’s interpretations, by their focus on
Henri’s words. The lines are sung/chanted by Henri as in the printed version, with pauses
after each four-line stanza. However, there is a middle-8 section after the third stanza, and
when Henri’s voice returns, instead of the printed poem’s fourth stanza, we hear these
alternative lines:
Love is opening Valentines
Love is when you read those awful lines
Love is when you read between the lines
Love is
(Amazing Adventures... CD)
The lines are tongue-in-cheek: the ‘awful lines’ refers to Valentine’s Day cards as well as,
perhaps, to pop song lyrics in general, and the innuendo of ‘reading between the lines’ also
refers back to the previous line. The fifth stanza of the poem is the same as the printed text,
but also moves away from the purely poetic source: whereas the printed text ends with an
ellipsis after the final ‘Love is’ (TMS1, 19), perhaps to indicate that there is more to say on
the subject, in the recorded song, Henri’s final ‘Love is’ is followed by a coda bringing
140
together the instruments, with a slowed-down rendition of the theme, ending on a muted
cymbal crash to fade out. The song starts and ends with music, returning to the
Mendelssohn-inspired theme – and places what that invokes at the forefront of the listener’s
experience.
Anaphoric structure is key to this poem, since it consists of a listing of phrases which Henri
uses to define love. In both the printed and the musical versions, we encounter the riff. A
riff, within music, is a phrase of repetition in the overall melody structure of a piece. Allan
F. Moore describes its early meaning in jazz as ‘an idea that is repeated, and that can often
be used over different harmonies with minimal alteration.’25 So, the riff is the musical
equivalent of anaphora, keeping the whole together by repeating a theme or an idea that
binds the whole. This is exactly what we see in Henri’s writing of ‘Love Is’ as well as in the
recorded versions. But more than this, the work itself is, in effect, a riff: Henri is using
different media (instead of harmonies) with minimal alterations (of the original words) to
explore an idea.
Repetitions of words, images, and phrases appear everywhere in Henri’s work, particularly
in the early poems, which were mostly written during a period of weekly live readings when
his oral poetics were being developed. When describing the key components of early
rock’n’roll in Rock: The Primary Text, Allan F. Moore emphasizes the need for a beat, for
stable repetition throughout a piece: it is the drum kit which ‘lays down the principle of
pattern repetition’.26 We can see this repeated in Henri’s writing: his vocalisations are often
marked out by a strong beat, even when unaccompanied by musicians. Anaphoric structures
also contribute to this. Anaphora exists in ‘Nightsong’, for example, both at the level of the
individual lines, utilising the same phrase again and again to drive the point home, but also
in its awareness of another repeated element of modern song form, the framing device which
often appears as a chorus or, indeed, is itself framed as a ‘middle 8’. The poem alludes to
Byron’s ‘So we’ll go no more a-roving’, which itself derives from a traditional Scottish folk
song, ‘The Jolly Beggar’, which includes the same two-line phrase ‘So we’ll go no more aroving/ So late into the night’.27 Henri’s opening and closing frame for ‘Nightsong’ updates
these lines:
So we’ll go no more a-raving
So late into the night
Though the heart be still as loving
25
Moore, p. 40-1.
Moore, p. 36.
27
Susan J. Wolfson, and Peter J. Manning, eds., Lord Byron: Selected Poems (London: Penguin,
2005), p. 507.
26
141
And the neonsigns so bright
(TMS2, 55)
The presence of ‘neonsigns’ is supported in the closing frame by ‘the night is daylightsaving’ (TMS2, 35), bringing the ‘nightsong’ into the modern world. This move is signalled
from the start by amending ‘a-roving’ to ‘a-raving’, referring to a new meaning of the word
‘rave’ from the 1960s as a party or way of acting relating to having a good time. 28 However,
the main body of the poem (a sort of chorus) is typified by the lack of such things:
No more blues by Otis Redding
No more coffee no more bread
No more dufflecoats for bedding
No more cushions for your head
(TMS2, 35)
The repeated phrase ‘no more’ is similar to the ‘but no you’ of ‘Adrian Henri’s Talking
After Christmas Blues’ (discussed later in this chapter), where the blues form fits the
laments of lost love or the absence of a certain person.29
MUSIC FOR MCGOUGH, THE SCAFFOLD, GRIMMS, AND PATTEN
Bomb Culture, Nuttall’s record of this period of British arts and culture, describes the
Liverpool scene in this one sentence:
The Liverpool Poets, Adrian Henri, Roger McGough, Brian Patten, Mike Evans,
Tonk, and their many local followers, formed a style for public reading with pop
groups which ... constituted a sort of gentle music-hall surrealism.30
This short comment contains a crucial perception: the readings are local and intermedial, and
they bring together both the popular culture of music hall and the modern art culture of
surrealism. What this ‘style for public reading’ consists of in practice is perhaps best
represented by the readings at Hope Hall, which arose out of the 1962 Merseyside Arts
Festival:
To a first-time visitor, some of these ideas must have seemed arty-farty, but humour
and self-mockery were very much part of it. Audience involvement was an essential
element of what we were all trying to do at the time, to break down the barrier
between them and us.31
28
Interestingly, the Oxford English Dictionary cites George Melly as a source for this new sense of
the word in 1965: ‘The word ‘rave’, meaning to live it up, was as far as I know a Mulligan–Godbolt
invention’ (George Melly, Owning Up, [Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1974], p. 75).
29
This poem first appears in print in the 1974 edition of The Mersey Sound, so it is not inconceivable
to think that Henri may have written it after Redding’s death on 10 December 1967, as a kind of elegy
for the singer.
30
Nuttall, p. 132. My research has found a number of poems by Tonk in Underdog’s first four issues
(see Patten/6/1/1/2, /3, /9, and /10) but no other information about this poet.
31
Roger McGough, Said and Done: the autobiography (London: Random House, 2005), p. 156.
142
The ‘we’ that McGough refers to here is not only himself, Henri, and Patten, but also John
Gorman, one of the organisers of the Festival, who formed the Scaffold with McGough and
Mike McGear (McCartney).32 A 1967 spread on Liverpool in the Daily Telegraph’s
Weekend section quotes McGough as saying that the Scaffold grew out of the Hope Hall
readings ‘with Gorman’; then ‘Henri joined us as a happeningist and the poetry became
dialogues and trialogues’: ‘That’s the thing here – there’s no preconceptions about what
poetry is. The arts are all mixed up.’33
McGough’s autobiography makes much of the Hope Hall events, not only for the genesis of
the Scaffold, but also because they are representative of the fact that the arts should be,
indeed are, ‘all mixed up’. The original set-up was: ‘satirical sketches and surreal dialogues,
interspersed with a poet and perhaps a folksinger or guitarist’.34 This was a multidisciplinary
approach to entertainment, but with an emphasis on show and spectacle rather than the
‘poetry plus’ nights at Sampson & Barlow’s or O’Connor’s.35 What McGough’s list sounds
most akin to is music hall: sketches and dialogues appear, music has its turn, and a variety of
acts can be seen in an evening. This coming together of artists from different areas of
entertainment – all of whom had their own personae and attitudes towards the audience – in
music hall is a key antecedent of Merseybeat. The strict lines between the arts are not
observed: an evening’s entertainment in a Victorian Music Hall would be as likely to include
an acrobat as an aria from an operetta.
At the peak of music hall’s appeal, during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries,
there were a great number of music halls and concert venues in Liverpool, aimed at all class
and income levels, as well as working men’s clubs.36 The music hall was an important site of
class mixing. Peter Bailey and J. Bratton’s two companion volumes of essays on music hall
frequently stress the social nature of the industry, writing of music hall as ‘a highly charged
32
Mike McCartney performed under the name ‘Mike McGear’ in the 1960s and 1970s as part of the
Scaffold and GRIMMS. This was partly in order to distance himself from his brother, Paul. In this
thesis, I refer to ‘McGear’ when discussing his work at that time, but also include quotations from his
autobiography, published under the name ‘McCartney’, and as such attempt to stay true to the most
relevant persona in each reference.
33
Facsimile cutting printed in P. Willis-Pitts, Liverpool The 5th Beatle (Colorado: Amozen Press,
2000), p. 73.
34
McGough, Said, p. 153.
35
Of the start of their nights at Sampson & Barlow’s, McGough’s account stresses the lack of
organisation, the improvised nature of the event, but also the element of audience creation:
These ones were just different people coming along and reading now and again. Which was
exactly what we wanted to do. What was good about it was there was suddenly an audience,
because you were doing it regularly it kept you going. And because there were always good
audiences, we brought our new poems, and a lot of it was very much Liverpool. (Interview
with McGough, November 2012.)
36
See G. J. Mellor, The Northern Music Hall (Newcastle: Frank Graham, 1970), p. 22.
143
social space’, bridging the gap between the pub and the theatre but also existing as a unique
entertainment venue in its own right: ‘the crowd were as much producers as consumers of a
form of social drama, in which styles and identities were tried out and exchanged’.37
Throughout these two volumes, essays repeatedly refer to the relationship between the
audience and performer, with music hall breaking down barriers much as the Merseybeat
poets sought to.
Nuttall’s comment about ‘gentle music-hall surrealism’38 thus deserves more attention. For
some, McGough was known more for the bestselling single ‘Lily the Pink’ than for his
poetry (hence the occasional tagline: ‘Roger McGough – of Scaffold fame’39), but there is a
clear music hall influence in his poetry’s puns and quick jokes (discussed in the previous
chapter). Take, for example, McGough’s poem ‘My Busseductress’, upon which the
Scaffold song ‘Bus Dreams’ is based.40 McGough’s poem tells the story of a bus conductor,
who ‘like everyone else/ ... has her busdreams too’ (TMS2, 86), the subject of which are
indicated by the aural wordplay of the title’s elision of ‘conductress’ and ‘seductress’. There
are textual differences between the poem and the song, such as the opening couplet: ‘She is
as beautiful as bus tickets/ and smells of old cash’ (TMS2, 86), which appears as the more
direct ‘She’s my busseductress/ she smells of old cash’ in the recording. The change could
be explained as the need to fit syllables to beats in a bar, but it is also a shift to greater
bawdiness, as are the other additions – the refrains, for example, which are a repeat of the
last two lines of each stanza by Gorman and McGear: their almost growl on ‘when the peak
hour is over/ and there’s nothing to do’, intimates that she does indeed have something
(someone?) to do. The entire piece is characterised by syncopated backing and rowdy
singing (the opening line, for example, begins as a grace note in the previous bar, and the
brass section swings throughout), to represent both the kind of burlesque set-up the
eponymous ‘Busseductress’ wants – ‘Three times a day/ she’d perform a strip-tease’ (TMS2,
86) – but also mimicking the style of a music hall character song. The Scaffold use the
music hall style to great effect, drawing on a tradition of cheeky humour and innuendo (as
opposed to the sophisticated burlesque of the European cabaret). For example, at the end of
the song they each shout out comments – such as ‘My lovely baloney’, ‘Why don’t you
phone me’, ‘It’s standing room only’ – culminating in all three singing a final exclamatory
37
Peter Bailey, ‘Making Sense of Music Hall’, in Music Hall: The Business of Pleasure, ed. by Peter
Bailey (Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 1986), pp. viii-xxiii, p. xvii-xviii.
38
Nuttall, p. 132.
39
Archive clipping, Henri K 1/7, ‘Adrian Henri’s world – from chip butties to Beatles’, Lincolnshire
Echo, 4 July 1972.
40
All references to ‘Bus Dreams’ are from the version of the track which appears on the compilation
album Thank U Very Much: The Very Best of Scaffold, prod. by Mike McGear (EMI Records,
724353847425, 2002). It was originally released as a single, Parlophone R5866, in October 1970.
144
‘Blueserged beauty!’ This – and the removal of McGough’s lines such as ‘say nicely “fares
please”’ and ‘best clippie voice’ (TMS2, 86) – present the ‘Busseductress’ as part of a bawdy
British music hall tradition.
Music hall is also evoked by McGough for the opening track of the Scene LP, ‘Knees Down
Mother Brown’. In this song, McGough puts on a Cockney accent, and uses Cockney
Rhyming Slang (such as the line ‘now I’m on the old King Cole’, meaning ‘Dole’,
unemployment benefit). The title is obviously a play on the traditional song ‘Knees Up
Mother Brown’, but here it addresses a mother embarrassing her son at his university
graduation, where the son as singer asks ‘need you be so working class?’, wanting his family
to play down their origins, as the title suggests.41 Andy Roberts called ‘Knees Down Mother
Brown’ ‘just a sort of music hall thing’ which was ‘thrown in as a sort of traditional opener
because it could involve everybody’,42 recorded for the Scene LP at the last minute, and used
as the opening track by Hal Shaper. The piece was useful because it could ‘involve
everybody’, just as communal singing was a way of getting the audience ‘on-side’ for music
hall acts. Mike McCartney recalls: ‘The way for Scaffold was pretty easy. We just had to
fulfil the demand for simple singalong comedy songs for a mass whistle-along audience.’43 It
is the mass appeal of songs such as ‘Lily the Pink’ (Christmas Number One in 1968) which
brought Scaffold to the public’s attention, but their regular evenings in Liverpool presented a
very different set. They also toured with musicians such as Zoot Money and Neil Innes, both
of whom would go on to be part of GRIMMS, probably surprising the audiences who had
only seen them on Top of the Pops.44
41
Speech can be interpreted, and meaning added, by a listener’s own attitudes: Theo Van Leeuwen
calls this ‘connotation’, believing that listeners infer ‘significance from provenance, from the
associations that come with certain “accents”’ (Theo Van Leeuwen, Speech, Music, Sound (London:
Macmillan, 1999), p. 141, 150). So, here, a Cockney accent is used by the Scaffold intentionally for
the listeners to associate the speakers with being working class. Whilst the student’s direct speech
does use Scouse vernacular (‘Watch it, lar, that’s my mar you’re talking about’), the Cockney accent
is used because it is not certain that a wider audience would understand the nuances of Liverpudlian
accents and their area and class distinctions, whereas ‘Cockney as working class’ is a connotation
they can rely on for full understanding of this song.
42
Interview with Andy Roberts, June 2012.
43
Mike McCartney, Thank U Very Much: Mike McCartney’s Family Album (London: Arthur Baker,
1981), p. 141.
44
Spencer Leigh remains undecided on whether the Scaffold should be included in the Mersey Beat
scene. He points out that ‘their stage humour was very different from their hit singles’ and ends his
section on the subject with the comment: ‘Scaffold haven’t worked together in recent years, but Mike
McGear has written his autobiography, Roger McGough has published books of poetry, and John
Gorman has had television success on TISWAS.’ (Spencer Leigh, with Pete Frame, Let’s Go Down the
Cavern [London: Vermillion, 2007], p. 171, 172). Whilst the phrasing puts McGough’s poetic career
almost as an aside, it is interesting that Leigh makes the point of showing what has happened to these
non-musicians in this book.
145
The Scene LP also showcases how McGough used music. ‘Let Me Die A Youngman’s
Death’ is ‘intentionally rhythmical’, a collaboration which was ‘very successful right from
the off’, as, according to Roberts, McGough ‘liked the way the accompaniment shaped it and
gave it a structure’.45 As mentioned in the previous chapter, recordings of McGough reading
this poem place great emphasis on being ‘banned’ from the Cavern, savouring the
ridiculousness of being banned from that most famous of Liverpudlian venues (and, also, of
the idea of being 104 at the time), and this version is no different. The other consistent
element of McGough’s readings of this poem is what Roberts calls the ‘snigger moment’ of
‘throw away every piece but one’, which is deliberately cued in for the audience and
emphasised by the lack of musical backing for this line in the version recorded for the Scene
LP. McGough usually pauses for comic effect in his readings before saying ‘but one’, but
here Roberts also adds emphasis by coming to an abrupt halt after ‘piece’, so only
McGough’s voice is heard ending the line (at which here, as in every live recording, the
audience does indeed laugh). McGough commented on this collaboration, when interviewed
in 2012, saying that Roberts ‘gave it some drama’.46 Roberts’s stop helps the audience to
hear the joke, but the performance also clearly includes an element of ‘knowingness’, of a
shared anticipation of the punchline on the part of both audiences and performers.
The music Roberts and McGough chose emphasises each verse as referring to a different
stage of life by having a different tune played for each, but music also unifies the piece as
Chopin’s funeral march (the third movement of Piano Sonata No. 2 in B flat minor, Op. 35)
is used as an opening phrase before McGough comes in with the first line: ‘Let me die a
youngman’s death’ (TMS1, 91). Roberts continues playing quietly during the verses,
changing the musical backing towards the end of each verse to start louder at each new age.
After the final verse, there is a pause, and then a final ‘funeral march’ phrase and concluding
flourish by Roberts. As Roberts suggests, the music surrounding ‘Let Me Die A
Youngman’s Death’ serves as ‘a rhythmical punctuation around the words’47 by which
McGough has indicated to the audience what he wants to emphasise from his original text.
McGough’s involvement with music is often quite separate from his poetry, but, as we saw
in the previous chapter, there is a clear oral strain to his work, the importance of rhythm and
pacing in his readings being inherently musical – with or without musical backing. The
attention to sound is very much in evidence.
45
Interview with Andy Roberts, June 2012.
Interview with Roger McGough, November 2012.
47
Andy Roberts, cited in Phil Bowen, A Gallery To Play To: The Story of the Mersey Poets (Exeter:
Stride, 1999), p. 93.
46
146
Patten was also an occasional contributor to the theatrical poetry, comedy, and music group
GRIMMS, formed by members of The Liverpool Scene, the Scaffold, and The Bonzo Dog
Doo-Dah Band.48 Whilst Patten was not as heavily involved in music in the early days as
McGough and Henri were, Roberts talks of his ‘major contributions’ to GRIMMS, and
remembers that he ‘embraced the theatricality of it all’, with his poems as ‘absolute
highlights’.49 Furthermore, a letter in the Penguin Archive tells us that Patten himself
suggested that The Mersey Sound came with a record of ‘poets reading solo (on own) or
backed by one of the beatgroups from the pool’,50 emphasising both the importance of sound
and music in this movement and Patten’s recognition of it. Patten’s ‘Interruption at the
Opera House’ (first published in The Irrelevant Song, and included in the second edition of
The Mersey Sound) was, no doubt, one of these ‘highlights’. It tells the story of ‘an
important symphony’ interrupted at its beginning by a man:
... crashing through the crowds
carrying in his hand a cage in which
the rightful owner of the music sat,
yellow and tiny and very poor;
and taking onto the rostrum this rather timid bird
he turned up the microphones, and it sang.
(TMS2, 150)
What follows on the page is a blank line, and then the response of the crowd: we do not hear
or read what the bird sang. ‘Interruption at the Opera House’ appears on GRIMMS’s selftitled first album in two parts.51 ‘Part One’ begins with a simple piano line, accompanying
Patten as he reads through the poem up to ‘How sweetly the bird sang!’ (TMS2, 150). Here
Zoot Money – as the bird – comes in initially with a scat vocal line, launching into lyrics
which do not feature in Patten’s own poem, where (as we have seen) the bird is silent. His
singing is accompanied by a drum kit, with a syncopated beat, and guitar and piano in a
blues style. ‘Part Two’ completes the poem, with Patten adding the line ‘at the very end of
the important symphony’, echoing his original opening, for this section about the aftermath
of the concert. After the concert, the ‘fur-wrapped crowds’ are replaced by ‘the attendants,
poor and gathered from the nearby slums at little expense’ (TMS2, 150), to emphasise clear
class distinctions:
In all the tenement blocks
the lights were clicking on,
48
The name GRIMMS is an acronym of the main members’ surnames: John Gorman, Andy Roberts,
Neil Innes, Mike McCartney, Roger McGough, and Vivian Stanshall.
49
Interview with Andy Roberts, June 2012.
50
Letter from Brian Patten to Anthony Richardson, n.d. (Penguin Archive at Bristol University, DM
1107/ D 103). ‘pool’ is a colloquial abbreviation for ‘Liverpool’.
51
GRIMMS, GRIMMS, prod. by Neil Innes (Island Records, HELP 11, 1973). This live album was
recorded at St. George’s Hall in Liverpool.
147
and the rightful owner of the music,
tiny but no longer timid sang
for the rightful owners of the song.
(TMS2, 151)
There is piano backing, but Zoot Money’s ‘Small Bird Theme’ does not reappear. Instead,
after this final line, Patten himself says ‘that’s you yeah’ to the audience. The political
charge is obvious: that the song belongs to the ordinary people rather than the elite.52 They
are the rightful owners of the song, and, Patten intends them (a live audience at St. George’s
Hall, Liverpool, in 1973) to identify with the attendants rather than the opera-goers. Rather
than treating it as an ‘intrusion’, they are open to this music: ‘from somewhere inside them
there bubbled up a stream,/ and there came a breeze on which their youth was carried’
(TMS2, 150), and it is this attitude of the right of popular ownership of the arts that the
members of the GRIMMS are celebrating in this piece.
One of the characteristics of Patten’s collaborations is a very ‘hands-off’ approach to the
musical composition. Whilst evidence of Patten’s involvement in early Events and other
interdisciplinary moments in Merseybeat history (as well as the readings and verbal play
discussed in the previous chapter) does exist, the musical interpretations of his poetry are
separate in a way that Henri’s never are. His involvement in ‘Interruption at the Opera
House’ is an example of his reading with music, but, in general, the music is not intrinsic to
the work. However, there is always a link between Patten as the originator or author of a
poem and the final composition, and although this is often as a performer rather than as part
of the composition process, he is still involved with the music connected to the poetry.
Patten’s work has been set to music on several occasions. The Vanishing Trick LP (1976),
produced by Mike Steyn, is comprised of one side of Patten reading his poems and one of
other Patten poems set to music (by Richard Thompson, Neil Innes, and Andy Roberts),
most performed by female artists (Linda Thompson, Norma Winstone). ‘Somewhere
Between Heaven and Woolworth’s’, for example, moves away from Patten’s original text,
turning the titular lines into a chorus running throughout the song, which Innes and Roberts
sing between Patten’s spoken verses. Another work across media is The Blue and Green
Ark.53 This is an ‘A-to-Z’ style picture book with words by Patten and illustrations by a
number of different artists. Ross Brown has also composed a soundscape which has been
recorded with Patten reading – echoing, for example, ‘O is for Ocean’ with a seascape. In
52
When introducing this poem at the Poetry International 1984, Patten stated that he had written the
poem in response to the fact that the Arts Council gave more money to opera than any other artform.
His belief is that opera is elitist and ‘it becomes an archaic form, outside of London, in the provinces’
(Various Artists, Poets Punks Beatniks and CounterCulture Heroes, prod. by Chris Hewitt [Ozit
Morpheus Records, OZITDVD11, 2010]).
53
See http://www.brianpatten.co.uk/media-page.html [accessed 3 April 2012].
148
both cases, the work begins on the page and is then brought into another artform by another
artist, creating a new instance of the work. The Blue and Green Ark is, for Patten, ‘the best
of my poems with music or sound’54 but it is also a visual experience, and an example of a
different kind of collaborative network to that which Henri and McGough involve
themselves in.
Du Noyer cites McCartney as claiming that ‘the tragedy of the Scaffold’ was ‘that we were
known more for the silly songs because they reached more people, than the stuff we really
enjoyed doing, the satirical comedy and the poetry.’55 In his autobiography, McCartney
states:
We’d tried the other theatrical, esoteric, word imagery way which succeeded at
university and small theatre audiences, but on a broader front wouldn’t hang on the
Beyond The Fringe, That Was The Week That Was, and (later) Monty Python,
washing line.56
The satire boom of the 1960s was very much the remit of the middle and upper classes, and
it is here that the major difference between music hall and satire lies: making fun from
without, or subversion from within. Satire was important in this period – for McCartney:
‘That Was The Week That Was was the only TV show that could get you out of the pub to
watch it’.57 Former public-schoolboy Richard Ingrams, co-founder of Private Eye in 1962,
said that he didn’t think Beyond the Fringe was ‘anything all that special’, rather it was just
‘the kind of thing the rest of us were doing – undergraduates in sweaters making silly jokes’,
but what it showed was that ‘it was possible to sell university humour ’.58 Alan Bennett, who
wrote and performed as part of Beyond the Fringe also says that ‘it has always seemed to be
that what was subsequently labelled “satire” was simply this kind of private humour going
public’.59 This is significant: satire is university humour, which is (despite Bennett’s own
background) middle and upper class, rather than the working class tradition of music hall.
Beyond the Fringe and its ilk were making jokes from the inside – middle class boys ‘taking
off’ middle class authority figures (and also drawing on an upper class tradition of ‘theatre
parties’) – rather than the outsider status of the music hall performer enacting a ‘swell song’.
Whilst Carpenter’s record of the satire boom indicates the debt Beyond the Fringe owes to
doing ‘silly turns’, there is no link between this and the ‘silly turns’ of Bailey’s music hall.
54
Interview with Brian Patten, April 2012. When asked in this interview if he would consider
producing another soundscape, Patten came up with other potential poems.
55
Mike McCartney, cited in Du Noyer, p. 134.
56
McCartney, p. 141.
57
McCartney, p. 100.
58
Richard Ingrams, cited in Humphrey Carpenter, That Was The Satire That Was: The Satire Boom of
the 1960s (London: Phoenix, 2002), p.155.
59
Alan Bennett, cited in Carpenter, p. 96.
149
George Melly describes the Scaffold in Revolt into Style as ‘satiric-pop’, aligning them with
the 1960s satire boom, and states that their work ‘swings between catchy little top twenty
singles and verbal and visual sniping at the establishment.’60 But, crucially, the Scaffold are
sniping from the outside. The events organised by the poets took their inspiration from the
audience-led and localised humour of music hall, taking on social commentary as
entertainment. Whilst they were certainly aware of avant-garde European traditions, such as
Surrealism, and contemporary American movements, such as Happenings, the influence of
these is softened, re-interpreted through Liverpool’s long tradition of humour. Roberts
makes this point about the evenings at O’Connor’s:
Our traditional platforms were back rooms in pubs and I’m certain that nowadays
we would be occupying the slot of an alternative comedian ... and people would
come as much to laugh as to be moved in other ways by the poetry, but of course
some of it was serious and people would react to that as well.61
The idea of alternative comedy is particularly important. Stand-up and the ‘alt comedy’
scene which developed in the UK in the 1980s comes very much out of what was happening
in the 1960s, and the satire boom, but histories of this trajectory have rarely, if ever,
considered music hall as an antecedent, and have certainly not considered the Merseybeat
scene in this context.62
MUSIC FOR HENRI
Phil Bowen notes Henri’s exposure to a variety of genres in his account of Henri’s early
biography, citing a record shop in Rhyl which stocked: ‘Dixieland music, the big bands, and
also Swing and Be-bop. Here, at the age of sixteen, with music already in his background,
Henri began his lifelong vocation as a frustrated jazz musician.’63 Later, whilst at Art
College in Durham, Henri was involved with skiffle and ‘played in the College Jazz Band’,
and he ‘stretched to singing a bit of blues.’64 When Henri uses jazz in his work, it is locospecific: jazz artists and their compositions are subsumed into Henri’s personal set of
references, mentioned to his audience to produce a certain effect, or to evoke a particular
milieu. Catherine Marcangeli remembers Henri’s desire to share his knowledge – both of art
and of music, as well as literature – as specifically anti-elitist: ‘he always used to say “Oh,
60
George Melly, Revolt into Style: The Pop Arts in the 50s and 60s (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1989), p. 132.
61
Interview with Andy Roberts, June 2012.
62
There is clearly more research to be done on this subject, particularly in relation to the
insider/outsider divide, and the status of those involved.
63
Bowen, p. 34.
64
Bowen, p. 34.
150
you don’t know that? You’ve got a treat coming!”’.65 Take, for example, Henri’s poem ‘Me’.
The poem, subtitled ‘if you weren’t you, who would you like to be?’, ending with Henri
admitting: ‘and/ last of all/ me’ (TMS1, 28), is an enumeration of twenty-seven writers,
twenty-eight artists, twenty-two musicians, and eleven public, political, or philosophical
figures (not including Henri himself).66 In creating the piece, Henri made a list of people he
admired, including several contemporaries, before turning this list into a poem (fig 4.1a). At
first glance, the final order appears to be random, but his notebook clearly shows deliberate
workings-out (fig 4.1b). Similarly, on the page, there does not appear to be an obvious
rhyme or rhythm scheme – the proliferation of names is itself enough. However, in
performance, Henri uses a chanting voice and the pattern becomes obvious (as in the
Penguin Audio Cassette recorded thirty years after the poem’s first outing). The first half of
the poem is split into four-line stanzas, following an 8-7-8-7 syllable pattern. The only
deviation in this section is that of the third stanza:
Belà Bartók Henri Rousseau
Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns
Lukas Cranach Shostakovich
Kropotkin Ringo George and John
(TMS1, 27)
The last line quoted here has eight syllables, which means a slight compression of the last
line (the ‘and’ is almost lost in the Penguin Audio Cassette recording, as if reading
‘George’n’John’). However, as a poem read aloud, each section appears to be made up of 4stress lines, so that stress rather than syllables is the key to the rhythm of the poem. There is
also humour in the juxtaposition of the names in each line – St John and de Sade, Kropotkin
as one of the Beatles.
In the closing stanza, the lines are much longer than the previous lists (ten or eleven
syllables each). Here the build-up of names is emphasized with three ‘ands’ before the final
‘punchline’, as it were:
Stéphane Mallarmé and Alfred de Vigny
Ernst Mayakovsky and Nicolas de Staël
Hindemith Mick Jagger Dürer and Schwitters
Garcia Lorca
and
last of all
me.
(TMS1, 28)
65
Interview with Catherine Marcangeli, May 2012.
One cannot help but be reminded here of Peter Blake’s collages and, in particular, his cover art for
the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (Parlaphone/EMI, 7027, 1967), which includes a
similarly culturally eclectic mix of people.
66
151
The chanting voice layers these proper nouns in a way which emphasizes the sheer quantity
of people mentioned rather than their individual significance. In addition, the ear picks up on
a variety of aural phenomena – such as assonance (‘Danilo Dolci Napoleon Solo’ [TMS1,
27]), alliteration (‘Bach and Blake’ [TMS1, 27]), and consonance (‘Kafka Camus’ [TMS1,
27]). The poem was a staple of Henri’s live readings in Liverpool in the 1960s, and for the
poem to be successful there has to be an acknowledgement of the two-way exchange of the
creative site: the audience not only bring their knowledge to the text, they also need to let
Henri know that they know who he is talking about. ‘Me’ is perhaps the most inclusive and
exclusive poem of the Merseybeat scene: inclusive in that it needs an audience in order to
work, but exclusive in that it needs that audience to know who both McCartney and Mahler
are. However, this could also be read (especially in the light of Catherine Marcangeli’s
position, above) as non-exclusive, indicating a confidence in the audience’s cultural range.
Henri’s use of common cultural referencing is in general a way of opening out a poem to an
audience; mixing his specialised knowledge with more familiar cultural icons, and indicating
the breadth of culture he could appeal to.
What is most interesting in the present context are the musicians and composers that Henri
includes in ‘Me’ – the heroes whom he considers will be known to his audience. Aside from
the Beatles already mentioned, other contemporary musicians appear such as Mick Jagger
and Manfred Mann. There are also a number of classical composers, ranging from the
Baroque with Bach, through Romanticism and after with Debussy and Mahler, to the
important twentieth century composers Shostakovich and Stravinsky. The third group of
musicians cited in ‘Me’ – the largest – are jazz artists and composers. The choices show his
personal taste, as the entire poem does: we have the blues singer Bessie Smith – known to
audiences through recordings of her own as well as being frequently covered locally by
George Melly;67 Charlie Parker, Cannonball Adderley, Thelonious Monk, and Miles Davis
are all be-bop musicians; and the other three were part of an avant-garde early 1960s jazz
movement, Roland Kirk, Charles Mingus, and John Coltrane.
Pete Townsend, writing about the jazz scene in 1960s Liverpool, terms all these artists as
‘breakers of moulds’, and he says that what is noticeable about the choices is ‘how much it
reflects the exceptional and the radical’.68 Townsend also notes that all of Henri’s jazz icons
are American. There are also a number of modern American artists and writers in the poem,
which, for Townsend, ‘confirms an impression that the USA represents the innovation, the
67
See Leigh, The Cavern, p. 42.
Pete Townsend, ‘Jazz Scene, Liverpool Scene: The Early 1960s’, in Gladsongs and Gatherings:
poetry and its social context in Liverpool since the 1960s, ed. by Stephen Wade (Liverpool: Liverpool
University Press, 2001), pp. 168-76, p. 174.
68
152
rebellion, the intensity of experiment and self-expression that could only exist in a society
unlike that of Britain in the first couple of decades after the war.’69 The poem also creates a
picture of the kinds of music around Henri in Liverpool at that time, a city which has always
looked out across the Atlantic instead of down towards London. It is unsurprising that the
jazz icons are American, because that was where the music came from, and where new
developments were taking place. Furthermore, the American contingent is countered by a far
greater number from, for example, the European avant-garde.70 What is important is not that
they are American, but that they represent an international counter-culture. The people
quoted are his heroes, part of his store of images and motifs, and what is noticeable is that
these same artists and composers appear again and again in Henri’s poetry, often used to
evoke a particular time and place, or a personal memory, which is then shared with the
audience.
In the poem (and the book of the same name) ‘Tonight at Noon’, Charles Mingus appears in
the dedication alongside the Clayton Squares, as noted above, with the title itself directly
referencing one of Mingus’s own songs and albums. In ‘I Want to Paint’, in the Tonight at
Noon version, there is a link between these two again, as Henri imagines ‘Charlie Mingus
playing the Mike Evans song book’ (TAN, 21), Mike Evans being the saxophonist for the
Clayton Squares and later a member of Henri’s band The Liverpool Scene. In the Scene LP,
‘Tonight at Noon’ is performed by Henri and Roberts with a simple guitar backing, with a
quiet repeated riff whilst Henri is reading and then Roberts adding louder sections between
stanzas. This is a poem read with accompaniment rather than a song, but Henri utilises the
performance to add oral elements such as his impersonation of Winston Churchill, noted in
the previous chapter in other (non-accompanied) recordings. The whole poem plays on the
idea of impossible love, and the music emphasizes this theme – such as the lack of
accompaniment on the Scene LP for the important final couplet – ‘You will tell me you love
me/ Tonight at noon’ (TMS1, 12). Roberts’s silence is deliberate, allowing the listener to
concentrate fully on the words which this entire poem has been leading up to. The music
accompanying the poem is not Mingus’s own ‘Tonight at Noon’, but, rather, music which
accents the words and points the listener towards the most important lines.
69
Townsend, in Wade, p. 175.
This geographical delineation is not precise. Within the list of eighty-eight names (not including
Henri) are also a number of Russian figures – certainly not American, but also not strictly European
(this is also the group which has been most affected by my own decisions as to where to place certain
figures between ‘writers’ and ‘philosophers/politicians’). There are also figures who worked across
continents, such as T. S. Eliot, born in America but who became a British citizen, or Marcel
Duchamp, French and active in Europe before moving to America and becoming a citizen there, and
religious and fictional figures, St. John of the Cross and Napoleon Solo, who are not easily placed
geographically.
70
153
In ‘Adrian Henri’s Last Will and Testament’, dated ‘Jan. ’64’, with Charlie ‘Bird’ Parker
and James Ensor as witnesses (TMS1, 14) – an American and a European, a musician and a
painter – Henri leaves his ‘priceless collection’ including Charles Mingus records to ‘all
Liverpool poets under 23 who are also blues singers and failed sociology students’ (TMS1,
13). Parker appears again in ‘Love Poem’, alongside Thelonious Monk and other musicians
and composers listed in ‘Me’. ‘Love Poem’, from February 1965, is worth quoting from at
length:
Monk takes his hands off the keyboard and smiles approvingly
The Beatles sing lullabys for our never-to-happen children
Quietly in the shadows by Central Station
William Burroughs sits dunking Pound Cake in coffee waiting for the last
connection
and sees us through the window
Bartók has orchestrated the noise of the tulips in Piccadilly Gardens for us
Marcel Duchamp has added your photograph to the Green Box
Dylan Thomas staggers into the Cromwell for one last one
and waves across to us
Kurt Schwitters smiles as he picks up the two pink bus tickets
we have just thrown away
Parker blows another chorus of Loverman for us
Ensor smiles behind his mask
Jarry cycles slowly behind us down Spring Gardens
Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns
Bless the bed we lie upon
(TMS1, 39-40)71
What these artists, writers, and musicians are doing, as the final couplet quoted here says, is
blessing the union. But the poem goes beyond blessing Henri’s relationship, to celebrate
another union: that of Liverpool and quotidian experience with the intellectual culture of
American and European modernism. The choices of heroes demonstrate Henri’s knowledge,
but there is also a romanticisation – in that Schwitters would smile at saving their particular
tickets, or that Parker is playing especially for them.72 ‘In the Midnight Hour’ has a very
similar section, revolving round music:
Andy Williams singing ‘We’ll keep a Welcome in the Hillsides’ for us
When I meet you at the station
The Beatles singing ‘We Can Work it Out’ with James Ensor at the harmonium
Rita Hayworth in a nightclub singing ‘Amade Mia’
(TMS1, 49)
71
The only one of these who does not appear in ‘Me’ is William Burroughs.
This sense is also heighted by the knowledge that Parker hated the 1946 version of ‘Loverman’,
recorded when he was suffering from ‘malnutrition and acute alcoholism’ – see Ross Russell, Bird
Lives! (London: Quartet Books, 1972), pp. 221-4, 305 – and as such this may not have been the best
choice of track.
72
154
Apart from James Ensor, all the references are to popular culture, but this line is also an
example of Henri’s lack of cultural hierarchies, imagining a nineteenth-century Belgian
painter as a member of a popular music group.73 The most obvious popular cultural reference
for this poem is the 1965 Wilson Pickett song, ‘In the Midnight Hour’. The two contain
similar sentiments (meeting the girl at midnight, wanting to hold her, and talking about her
eyes and the stars). In fact an early collaboration for live performances of the poem was with
local soul group the Almost Blues playing Pickett’s song to accompany Henri speaking.
Indeed, Roberts recalls that this was the way that they performed the poem on the BBC show
Look at the Week (which sparked Hal Shaper’s LP).74 Of course, to continue in this vein
would have led to copyright issues, but more importantly, by using a pre-existing number,
the poem and the song could not have been perfectly integrated. This, as has been stated in
the Introduction, is Merseybeat’s main criticism of poetry-and-jazz. Whilst there is a lack of
recorded evidence for improvisation in the early performances, anecdotal evidence of it does
exist. It is about the evolution of performance, changing elements to suit audiences and
using a collaborative creative process. Roberts says of The Liverpool Scene: ‘it was a sort of
collective of writers and the whole thing was collaborative’ with improvisation and
spontaneity as key components of collaboration: ‘somebody would start something and we’d
join in and see where it went’.75
When Henri uses an external source (such as the Pickett song, or Parker’s ‘Loverman’) he
deliberately brings the familiar music into his own personal space. In another love poem,
‘Who?’, written for his then-wife Joyce, whom we find ‘waiting dark bigeyed/ in a corner of
a provincial jazzclub’ (TMS2, 38), music is used to represent their life together alongside
domestic images. The poem is full of longing, the heavy enjambment of phrases drawing-out
each question:
Who
can I
buy
my next Miles Davis record
to share with
73
‘We Can Work It Out’ (1965) features John Lennon on the harmonium. James Ensor did in fact
play the instrument – there is a photograph by Maurice Antony of Ensor in his music studio with his
painting The Entry of Christ into Brussels in 1889 (1988) hung on the wall behind the harmonium
(Patricia G. Berman, James Ensor: Christ’s Entry into Brussels in 1889 [Los Angeles: Getty
Publications, 2002], p. 94). Both Ensor and this painting will be discussed in Chapter Five, in relation
to Henri’s ‘Entry’.
74
Furthermore, in a nice circular moment, when Wilson Pickett played at the Cavern (with the Tony
Colton Big Boss Band), 20 November 1965, saxophonist Tommy Huskey from the Almost Blues was
asked to play by Picket (see Leigh, The Cavern, pp. 150-1).
75
Interview with Andy Roberts, June 2012.
155
who
makes coffee the way I like it
and
love the way I used to like it
(TMS2, 38)
It is a poem about sharing and partnership – indeed it begins ‘Who can I/ spend my life/
with’ (TMS2, 37), but the comment about making love ‘the way I used to like it’ changes the
tone. There is a sense of searching in the repeated questioning, and this line suggests why.
Henri twists the reader’s expectations, inserting a note of anxiety and melancholy into a
poem which at first appeared to be a traditional love poem. It is also hard to ignore the fact
that it is ‘my life’ and ‘my next Miles Davis record’ (the ‘I’ appears six times before the first
‘you’). Take, for example, the construction of these typical lines:
Who can I
listen to Georges Brassens
singing
‘Les amoureux des bancs publiques’
with
(TMS2, 37)
The focus in this section is apparently rather more on Georges Brassens than Joyce.
Significantly, the dedication ‘for Joyce’ comes at the end of the poem rather than
immediately after the title. This simultaneously makes her part in the poem smaller and also
much larger. Smaller, because we get only glimpses of the addressee between the authorial
‘I’, but also much larger because the bigger picture is being evoked by Henri through a set of
personal images: kinds of music, a series of places, different seasons, and the everyday
images which are, most importantly, every day.
As well as these references to jazz, rock, and classical music, Henri also refers to popular
music. In ‘Mrs Albion You’ve Got A Lovely Daughter’, discussed in Chapter Two, the
‘beautiful boys with bright red guitars’ are playing at The Cavern or The Sink (TMS1, 55-6),
and the Beatles appear in the poems quoted above, while other Mersey Beat bands have
poems dedicated to them – usually bands that had themselves played with Henri and the
other poets at their readings. Henri also asserts the equivalence of poetry and pop music:
‘Tonight at Noon’ includes the line ‘Poets get their poems in the Top 20’ (TMS1, 11),
although within the context of the poem this is an impossible dream. In the Tonight at Noon
version of ‘I Want to Paint’, Henri similarly wishes to see ‘Adrian Mitchell with 15 poems
in the Top 20’ (TAN, 21). Pop music clearly fascinated Henri, as part of popular culture. In
his ‘Notes on Painting and Poetry’ in Tonight at Noon, he cites the ‘degree of freedom of
expression the new pop stars have’ as their main strength:
156
because of the whole pop aura that surrounds their work they could afford to allow
themselves obscure or very personal images or sounds and their public will accept
it. Whereas we always have to worry about the problem of communicating: what
can’t you allow yourself to say. I think this is a marvellous situation, for them.
(TAN, 79, author’s italics)
As we have seen, this idea of communication is crucial for Merseybeat. The implication here
is that music itself is a communication tool, and that the ‘very personal images’ are allowed
because they are presented within that ‘aura’.
Jazz is important to Henri in and of itself, as the music that he likes to listen to, the
soundtrack to various love affairs and social occasions, but, more than this, the style itself
has clearly influenced his writing. Marshall Stearn’s definition of jazz is that it is ‘a semiimprovisational American music distinguished by an immediacy of communication’.76
Essentially, the development of a piece is determined by situational factors, rather than a
rigid composition set out pre-performance. This could equally apply to Henri’s poetry and
his Events, inspired by Allan Kaprow’s Happenings – the audience can affect where the
reading goes and what is read, just like an improvised solo structured into a jazz piece. In his
‘Notes on Painting and Poetry’, Henri shows his own understanding of this. He states his
belief that the ‘“musical” values are what makes poetry poetry’ (TAN, 68). The quotation is
from a section about the misconception of spontaneity in Happenings (they do not just
‘happen’). Henri uses the example of jazz improvisation to explain that there is ‘freedom for
the performer to alter the pre-determined sequence if necessary’, but ‘even jazz
improvisation is usually “on the chords of” a fixed sequence’ (TAN, 68). Both within a
poem’s internal structure and across variations and reworkings of these poems, Henri’s use
of anaphoric structure and a riff-like improvisatory mode allows him to explore a theme or
an idea.
ADRIAN HENRI’S TALKING BLUES
As a self-described ‘blues singer’ (TMS1, 13), blues form is a particularly appropriate one
for Henri. In poems such as ‘Adrian Henri’s Talking After Christmas Blues’ not only the
title but also the form of the verses is embedded in the ‘talking blues’ mode. ‘Well I woke up
this mornin’’ (TMS1, 31) opens the poem, a common opening line or repeated chorus for the
‘talking blues’. Henri also shortens ‘morning’ to ‘mornin’’, representing on the page the way
the word is sung/spoken in a typical blues song. Big Bill Broonzy – who performed at the
76
Marshall Stearn, cited in Simon Frith, Sound Effects: Youth, Leisure, and the Politics of Rock
(London: Constable, 1983), p. 16.
157
Cavern on 13th March 195777 – recorded a number of pieces which fall under the remit of
‘talking blues’, such as ‘Big Bill Blues’, which opens: ‘I got up this mornin’, feelin’ sad and
blue/ I lost my baby now tell me, what I'm goin’ to do’, which ‘Adrian Henri’s Talking After
Christmas Blues’ echoes.78 The overarching theme of Henri’s ‘talking blues’ is of him
speaking to a lost love and telling her of how he misses her during the seasonal celebrations:
‘Should Auld Acquaintance be Forgot?/ I don’t know girl but it hurts a lot’ (TMS1, 31). This
echoes the sentiment of ‘Big Bill Blues’. In the third verse, for example, Broonzy sings:
‘Now I’ve got to walk by myself, and sleep by myself,/ on account the one I’m lovin’, she
keep on lovin’ someone else’. One of the most distinctive elements of blues form is the
repetitive nature of the chord sequence, combined with the repetition of the words, both of
which the listener expects. In ‘Adrian Henri’s Talking After Christmas Blues’, Henri repeats
‘but no you’ at the end of every verse to reiterate the fact that ‘there was no one in your
place’ (TMS1, 31).
One of the defining characteristics of blues, alongside the circular repetition, is ‘ordinary
language’, which, for sociomusicologist Simon Frith, is ‘a kind of accumulated knowledge,
a shared way of being’.79 This is one of the reasons for Henri to utilise this form, part of his
desire to communicate with people by using language which is accessible to them. ‘Adrian
Henri’s Talking After Christmas Blues’ is a list of everyday objects and feelings, in a normal
situation – here the aftermath of a break-up – that would have been readily understood by his
listeners and readers. In the Penguin Audio Cassette, Henri uses a beat-driven, sing-song
voice to emphasise the verse form of this poem, so that the listener is aware of the allusion to
the blues even without musical backing.
Emphasis in blues form comes often from repeated words or phrases, picking up on, and
reminding us of, the theme of the poem. As I argued earlier, the use of anaphora in the
poems is effectively a verbal riff, showing how Henri clearly understood the blues medium.
This section discusses several works by him – solo and collaborative – which use the form.
According to Roberts, Henri was ‘absolutely steeped in blues and jazz’, he was a ‘walking
encyclopaedia’, and the two men’s friendship developed in part because of their mutual love
of the genres.80 Because Henri was so familiar with the blues, Roberts found writing music
to go with his lyrics almost intuitive, as the original words on paper were already written in a
blues form. ‘Classroom Blues’, which also features on the Scene LP, with a 12-bar blues
77
See Leigh, The Cavern, p. 27-8.
Big Bill Bronzy, The Anthology, prod. by Glenn Gretland (Not Now Music, NOT2CD401, 2011).
79
Simon Frith, Performing Rites: On the value of popular music (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1996), p. 174.
80
Interview with Andy Roberts, June 2012.
78
158
accompaniment from Roberts, includes the line ‘I call it pretty music but the old people call
it the blues’, which is also the title of two songs by Stevie Wonder.81 Henri introduces the
poem as being ‘for little Stevie Wonder and little Heather Wonder’, the former
acknowledging his source and the latter referencing Heather Holden, one of his art school
students with whom he had a relationship, and whose work is included in The Liverpool
Scene anthology.
For the Scene LP, Roberts accompanied ‘Adrian Henri’s Talking After Christmas Blues’ in a
slightly different musical style, whilst still keeping the ‘talking blues’ connection through
the title and interjection-style phrases such as the opening ‘Well I woke up this mornin’ it
was Christmas Day’ (TMS1, 31). Henri introduces the piece: ‘this is a kind of Liverpool hillbilly song from the mountains of Aigburth’. This introduction takes his knowledge of the
Southern American source of the blues and merges it first with a different regional style
(Country and Western), and then further, to another country entirely, combining it with
Liverpool imagery. The Scene LP version highlights and heightens the American
connection, with jokey references such as Roberts playing his accompanying country and
western style riffs on a banjo, and Henri affecting a Deep South accent during his listing of
stocking contents, ‘chocolates/ . . . . aftershave’ (TMS1, 31); using ‘gal’ instead of ‘girl’; and
elongating the vowel of ‘spring’ at the close of the poem, with a slight US accent throughout
to emphasise the American source.
The fun that Henri had with this version of the piece, taking a Deep South American musical
source and replacing it with a Mid Western style, was partly in jest at his own displacement
of the blues into Liverpool. Henri wrote ‘I’ve Got These Fleetwood Mac Chicken Shack
John Mayall Can’t Fail Blues’ for The Liverpool Scene, a five and a half minute guitar-led
piece which makes fun of the ‘white boy blues boom’82 of the time, and the appropriation of
a traditionally black American style by artists from the ‘deep deep south of the river
Thames’, referencing both the origin of the blues in the Southern United States and the
north/south divide in the UK. The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band had a similar piece – ‘Can
Blue Men Sing The Whites’, which picks up on the topic, discussed widely in the music
press at this time, of white men singing the blues.83 Roberts refers to the song as ‘gently
ribbing the people who, to be honest, were our peer group’, who were part of the same
81
Released originally under the name Little Stevie Wonder, ‘I Call It Pretty Music But The Old
People Call It The Blues (Part 1)’, with ‘Part 2’ as a B-side, which is not a continuation, but a
completely different song. (Tamla Motown, T54061[A], May 1962). The first of the two tracks is
quite standard rock’n’roll, whilst the second is much more bluesy.
82
Du Noyer, p. 300.
83
Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, Cornology, prod. by Tim Chacksfield (EMI Records, 07779959525,
1992).
159
circuit in the late 1960s: ‘quite often we’d be on the bill with them and they loved it. They
thought it was great that we were taking a liberty with the music that they were taking very
seriously and they really enjoyed that.’84
‘Adrian Henri’s Talking Toxteth Blues’, already mentioned in Chapter One for its Liverpool
8 connection, utilises the traditional ‘talking blues’ opener (‘Well, I woke up this morning...’
[PA, 39]), but the destruction of the city is mirrored in his subversions of the ‘talking blues’
format, with ellipses breaking up the rhythm of the verses. ‘Car Crash Blues, or Old Adrian
Henri’s Talking Surrealistic Blues’ (dedicated to Jim Dine and Charles Baudelaire, again
linking American and European art traditions) also moves away from a strict ‘talking blues’
format but still includes many of the same characteristics, including colloquialisms and
anaphora (as well as referencing the form in the extended title). This poem first appears in
print in Tonight at Noon, in 1968, and is included in the third, revised and expanded, edition
of The Mersey Sound. The poem’s six verses follow a regular rhyme and rhythm scheme,
comprised of two statements across three lines each, ending with ‘baby’, followed by three
statements of a line each, and then a final ‘baby’. The first and second statements rhyme (on
the second line of each section), and the following three lines of images also rhyme together:
You make me feel like
a Wellington filled with blood
baby
You make me feel like
my clothes are made of wood
baby
You make me feel like a Green Shield stamp
You make me feel like an army camp
You make me feel like a bad attack of cramp
baby
(TAN, 39)
The repetition of ‘baby’ throughout serves as a reminder of the poem’s theme – the
endearment jars when juxtaposed with the ways in which the woman makes him feel (as
opposed to, say, Nina Simone’s ‘My Baby Just Cares For Me’, where the endearment
indicates the singer’s positive feelings) – and also provides a recall to the beat. The
complexities of this poem, subtly twisting the endearment, are similar to another listing
poem, ‘Without You’, discussed in the previous chapter, with its jarring and complicated
mix of positive and negative consequences of being ‘without you’.
84
Interview with Andy Roberts, June 2012. As well as performing alongside these groups in the late
1960s, both of the artists referred to in Henri’s title – ‘I’ve Got These Fleetwood Mac Chicken Shack
John Mayall Can’t Fail Blues’ – performed in Liverpool earlier in the decade (see Leigh, The Cavern,
p. 135 and p. 120 respectively).
160
For ‘Car Crash Blues’, Roberts states that ‘the form of the poem dictated the shape of the
music’, and that it was clear to him that ‘the poem already had a structure’.85 This is
particularly evident in the version of the piece on the Scene LP. Henri announces the piece
using the full title: ‘this is Car Crash Blues or Old Adrian Henri’s Talking Surrealistic
Blues’, and Roberts immediately opens with a strong blues guitar line, repeating the same
few chords to create a musical phrase into which Henri’s poetic phrases fit. The rhymes of
the three short statements are emphasised in particular in the last verse, which differs slightly
from the format of the previous verses. After the three short phrases, there are another three,
without the initial ‘you make me feel’, which is noticeable on the page with the lack of
punctuation at the beginning of each phrase, making it obvious that this is a shortened
version of the previous full phrases:
like a hunchback’s hump
like a petrol pump
like the girl
on the ledge
that’s afraid to jump
like a
garbage truck
with a heavy load on
baby
(TAN, 40)
At ‘hump’, ‘pump’, and ‘jump’ Roberts’s accompaniment stops each time with a loud chord.
For the final four lines quoted here there is no music, but Henri speaks the lines very slowly,
almost chanting, replacing Roberts’s guitar beat with his own emphasis. Roberts returns to
the guitar to accompany Henri’s final ‘baby’. By using music to cue the listener in to
important elements of the song, Henri and Roberts direct the interpretation of the piece – in
Roberts’s words, ‘the music was imparting energy’86 – focusing very much on the rhythms
of the original poem and the sentiment.
The Liverpool Scene performed the song many times, recording it as ‘Baby’ (rather than
using Henri’s full title). On the Scene LP, Henri’s vocalisation interprets the line breaks in
the first half of each stanza as a pause, as if he is thinking of what to say after ‘You make me
feel like’, drawing the last word out. Roberts’s guitar line from the Scene LP is used for the
opening of The Liverpool Scene version, but as Henri starts to sing, the rest of the band
(Bryan Dodson and Mike Hart) join on percussion and brass with Roberts’s guitar providing
a bass line instead of the melody. There are some minor textual differences between this
85
86
Interview with Andy Roberts, June 2012.
Interview with Andy Roberts, June 2012.
161
version and the printed version, and the following quotation replaces the first two phrases of
the third stanza of the poem, represented here in the same format:
You make me feel like
a record by RCA
baby
You make me feel like
a young girl that’s got in their family’s way
baby 87
This piece, ‘Baby’, is a unique performance instance which blends the original Henri poem
with The Liverpool Scene’s musical abilities, forming a collaborative creative space that
takes the words on the page and elevates them into another medium. The work ‘Car Crash
Blues or Old Adrian Henri’s Talking Surrealistic Blues’ is thus made up of three distinctive
parts: a poem on the page, utilising a musical form but clearly able to be experienced as a
text; a poem read aloud with accompaniment, emphasising the source musical form and
incorporating both Henri and Roberts in the creative process; and a recorded song by a band
which takes it away from the ‘talking blues’ and gives it back to the listener in the guitarand-drum-led style of 1960s British popular music.
SETTING BAT-POEMS TO MUSIC
Comics and comic book characters are another important part of popular culture which the
Merseybeat poets appropriate. Both Henri and McGough, with their respective musical
groups, released tracks inspired by Batman, but specifically in his incarnation in the Adam
West ABC TV show. ‘Batpoem’, from Henri’s poem of the same name, was recorded by
The Liverpool Scene in 1968. The band uses the theme from the ABC TV show. The theme,
written by Neal Hefti, would have been immediately recognisable as belonging to this
instance of the Batman canon, the ABC TV series, which sits firmly within a 1960s
aesthetic, complete with Pop Art-esque ‘Pow!’ interjections during fight scenes. The poem
brings the comic out of childhood into the political world of the 1960s and the Vietnam War.
Here Batman is exhorted, as a specifically American hero, to:
Help us bomb those jungle towns
Spreading pain and death around
Coke’n’Candy wins them round
Batman.
(TMS2, 40)
87
The Amazing Adventures Of... CD. The significance of RCA – within the context of the song’s
negative similes – could be due to their attempts to introduce a new ‘Compact 33’ record format to
replace 45rpm singles. The campaign folded only a year after its introduction in January 1961:
therefore the phrase effectively means that he feels a failure, or unwanted.
162
The brand Coca-Cola and the Americanism ‘candy’ are used as obvious US popular culture
references as part of a critique of American foreign policy. Their connective ‘and’ is itself
contracted to ‘n’ to both link the two more closely (it appears as one word on the page) and
ape contemporary word patterns, such as ‘rock’n’roll’. However, the poem goes on to
reference a Liverpudlian location, ‘Flash your Batsign over Lime Street/ Batmobiles down
every crimestreet’ (TMS2, 41). Henri brings the American superhero into everyday
Liverpool life, figuring the local with the international both to further critique the war
(Batman, being fictional, cannot go to Vietnam) but also because Batman was in Liverpool –
in the television series and comics, but also brought into daily reality through adverts (see
fig 1.3) and in the Merseybeat image canon (see fig 4.2).
A live television performance of The Liverpool Scene performing ‘Batpoem’ in February
1969 opens with Henri and Roberts singing in infantile voices ‘Rock a bye baby’, ending
‘when the wind blows Batman will drop’, which itself takes on a sinister edge with the later
introduction of Napalm bombs. Roberts then plays the opening lines of the TV theme. 88 As
Henri starts to recite the poem, Mike Evans takes over on saxophone playing the theme
music on loop throughout. This is a live performance, and in its course Henri uses various
movements to augment the audience’s experience, such as pointing his hand down and
dropping the arm at the ‘drop that Batnapalm’ line, in reference to the US airstrikes on the
Viet Cong. There is another addition to this version which highlights the Liverpudlian
origins over the American ones. After the ‘Coke’n’Candy’ section, Henri adds an extra
verse:
Help us out at Goodison Park, Batman,
Come down to Anfield just for a lark, Batman.
Help us save our gracious team,
Lois Lane for Norris Green,
Come and join the Liverpool Scene... Batman 89
This is a remarkably non-partisan request, giving equal footing to Liverpool FC and Everton,
although the idea that Batman might need to ‘come down’ to Anfield could perhaps reflect
the fact that in the early sixties Liverpool were in the Second Division of the Football
League. The high status of football in this city is reflected in the adaptation of the National
Anthem in the third line quoted here: ‘our gracious Queen’ is replaced by the assonance-led
mondegreen of ‘team’. Furthermore Henri’s use of the inclusive pronouns ‘us’ and ‘our’ link
88
‘Batpoem’ was released in 1969 on The Amazing Adventures Of The Liverpool Scene. The video
can be seen here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=m0GUbAImHuw&feature=related [accessed 10
August 2012].
89
This extra verse was also included in the play Love, Light and Adrian Henri written by and starring
Dhanil Ali (Unity Theatre Liverpool, 10-12 February 2011), which recreated the atmosphere of a
1961 Event (‘happening’).
163
him and the audience together. A local audience would also have noted the joke of ‘Lois
Lane for Norris Green’ where the name of the Superman heroine is linked to the name of a
local housing estate: ‘Lois Lane’ could be a street; ‘Norris Green’ could be a person’s name.
The album version of ‘Batpoem’ by The Liverpool Scene uses the same words as the printed
version of the poem, but without the opening lullaby or this final football-centred verse.
Henri’s vocalisation of the poem uses ‘Batman’, spoken after every request, as a way of
imposing a strict rhythm (within the twelve bar blues format) on the verses, as the request
lines are not uniform in length. Rather, the anaphoric ‘Batman’ falls at the same point in the
musical score each time, regulating the song’s lyrics as well as bringing the audience’s
attention back to the main theme. This could be said to mirror the layout of the printed text,
where the imperative-led lines are followed by indented single-word lines for ‘Batman’,
appearing almost in the centre of each page to further highlight the superhero’s name:
Take me back to Gotham City
Batman
Take me where the girls are pretty
Batman
(TMS2, 40)
The theme as played by Roberts is slightly faster than that of the ABC TV show, with Bryan
Dodson’s percussive beat giving a sense of urgency which (although present in the opening
credits’ images of Batman and Robin chasing villains all over Gotham) is here contrasted
with Henri’s style of singing – close to his speaking voice, elongating certain vowels for
emphasis, and always aware of the beat inherent in his lines. For example, to make up beats
in the short line ‘Help us smash the Vietcong’ (TMS2, 40), Henri draws out the ‘g’ at the end
of ‘Vietcong’.
Furthermore, the aural versions of this piece are able to add layers of meaning that the words
on the page cannot fill. For example, for the line ‘I want to be like you/ Batman’ (TMS2, 41)
Henri puts on an American accent, imitating a child, pronouncing the phrase ‘I wanna’. By
putting on this accent, Henri distances himself from the statement he is making – clearly
telling the listener that he is playing a part for those lines, something which is not clear in the
printed text (there are no quotation marks around the phrase). The stanza begins ‘Show me
what I have to do’ (TMS2, 41), following the imperative-led structure of the poem, but Henri
sings the line staccato, contrasting it aurally even further with the sing-song American
accent later, charging his words with meaning, intimating that the American need to be a
superpower has its origins in a childish (fictional) place. In terms of crossmedia, this
recording adds layers to the original poem by drawing the audience’s attention to certain
164
elements, but the poem itself still exists separate from this, on the page, and does not depend
on the musical accompaniment.
The same superhero, and the same television incarnation, was used by McGough for
‘Goodbat Nightman’. According to Mike McCartney:
We went to Brian [Epstein] in his NEMS emporium and said, we’ve got this idea
and we’ve got to do it now. The Batman phenomenon is going to be even bigger. He
hummed and ha-d and wanted us to do other things. It didn’t come out until the end
of the Batman mayhem. The record didn’t reach the audience it should have done.90
The Scaffold’s ‘Goodbat Nightman’ was released in December 1966, with the ABC TV
series appearing on British screens in May of the same year.91 Perhaps the delay did harm
the sales of the Scaffold song, as it is primarily a parody of this specific series, whereas
Henri’s inspiration links the series to a wider American political movement. McGough’s
lines tell a story of Batman and Robin at the end of a ‘hard day helping clean up the town’:
They’ve locked all the doors
and they’ve put out the bat,
Put on their batjamas
(They like doing that)
They’ve filled their batwater-bottles
made their batbeds,
With two springy battresses
for sleepy batheads.
(TMS1, 77)
Some neologisms are more successful than others, but these are clearly inspired by the
series’ narrator, William Dozier, who ended each episode with ‘Tune in tomorrow – same
Bat-time, same Bat-channel!’ The banality of Batman and Robin’s evening routine is sent up
further in the Scaffold version of the poem by their use of the music. This also comes from
the ABC TV show; but it is not the opening credits theme, rather it is an imitation of the
‘chase music’, making the filling of batwater-bottles all the more comic by placing it in
direct aural comparison with the antics the two superheroes usually get up to on screen.
A key addition to the song is the prayer section, which falls in the space between the two
‘halves’ of the printed text (delineated by asterisks) in The Mersey Sound. The false
American accents of McCartney and Gorman and the use of catchphrases (KA-POW!)
deliberately link the superheroes to the Batman and Robin of the ABC TV series. The
90
Bowen, p. 82.
All references to Goodbat Nightman are from the version of the track which appears on the
compilation album Thank U Very Much: The Very Best of Scaffold. It was originally released as a
single, Parlophone R5548.
91
165
additional lines in the song continue McGough’s puns and neologisms, such as the exchange
‘“Batman, how did Batwoman die? … Suicide?”/ “Batricide!”’. The prayer section, as added
by the Scaffold, evokes A. A. Milne’s ‘Vespers’ (1924), but instead of praying for family
members (‘God bless Mummy. I know that’s right./ Wasn’t it fun in the bath to-night?’),
Batman and Robin pray:
God bless all policemen
and fighters of crime,
May thieves go to jail
for a very long time.
(TMS1, 77)
McGough’s solo reading ‘fades out’ at the end as if not to disturb the two ‘falling asleep’
(TMS1, 77), just as Milne’s poem (Christopher Robin’s first-person prayer) is framed by the
opening and closing lines ‘Hush! Hush! Whisper who dares!/ Christopher Robin is saying
his prayers’.92 Instead of fading out, in the Scaffold song the incidental music continues and
so too does Batman and Robin’s conversation, puns included – when Batman heads to the
‘batroom’, to Robin’s exclamation ‘Holy-loo-ya’, the deliberate emphasis is intentionally
sending themselves up, picking up on the camp of the television show.
The McGough (and Scaffold) use of Batman is very different to Henri’s, lacking any
political motivation and purely focusing on the camp aspects of Adam West’s interpretation
of the comic book character. However, both clearly depend on knowledge of that television
show, and expect the audience to understand the nuances inherent in each work.93
92
A. A. Milne, When We Were Very Young (London: Methuen, 1970), p. 99, author’s italics. ‘Robin’
provides another link between the two poems – the prayer is said by either Christopher Robin,
Milne’s son, or Batman’s sidekick. Interestingly, the 1960 edition of the Liverpool University Rag
Magazine, PANTOSFINX, includes this unattributed parody of ‘Vespers’:
Little boy kneels at the foot of the bed,
Droops on his little hands, little gold head,
Hush, Hush, whisper who dare,
Christopher Robin is having a swear.
“God bless Mummy, I know that’s right,
Wonder who she’s gone out with tonight.
If I open my razor a little bit more,
I can slash Daddy’s face as he comes through the door.”
Grandmother’s face is a little bit bluer,
Christopher Robin is going to do ’er.
From PANTOSFINX 1960, p. 35 (Liverpool University Archive, SPEC R/LF379.5.P19.U55).
93
Henri’s own love of comic books has been captured on camera by Mike McCartney: ‘this is Ade,
plus Marvel comic’ (Mike McCartney, Mike McCartney’s Liverpool Life: Sixties Black and Whites
[Birkenhead: Garlic Press, 2003], p. 70-1), see fig 4.3.
166
MUSIC AND EVOCATION
In ‘Notes on Painting and Poetry’ Henri refers to those ‘traditionally “literary” people’ (early
critics) who ‘feel that if the point can be got across at one hearing then it can’t be any good’
(TAN, 67). In contrast, what matters for Henri is ‘audience-communication’ (TAN, 67). The
communication that pop songs get across so easily is mirrored in his use of that music in
order to connect with his own audience. As we have seen, music is used within Merseybeat
poetry as a way of adding meaning beyond the bounds of the printed text or what words-onthe-page can do. The evocation of music is used to indicate a mood or a type of person, or,
most significantly, to conjure up a memory for both the poem’s subject and the
reader/listener themselves. In Autobiography, Henri mentions a set of musical references
which remind him of his mother, powerfully evoking her through specific artists and kinds
of music and sound:
once-a-year concerts of Beethoven. Blake’s Grand March or selections from
Gounod she’d play on the piano for me. Later there was only the drinking club,
dirtyjoke comedians, the hideous songs from musicals. her bending over beautiful in
the darkness to kiss me coming in from a dance smelling of perfume and gin-andlime ... loving the children’s popsongs but still sometimes listening to Caruso and
John McCormack
(A, 29-30)94
Whilst this is clearly a set of personal signifiers, the reader or listener is also included in this
nostalgia, intended to recognise the artists and situations and understand how Henri’s mother
is presented through this. Just as the success of ‘Me’ depends on the audience’s knowledge
of musicians, composers, and artists (not to mention names from other disciplines such as
literature and politics), so here Henri is aware of the need to use references that have
meaning for the audience and shows a trust in a common culture that exceeds the usual
notion of ‘popular’ culture.
Autobiography also uses music as part of a list evoking the specific time and place of
Henri’s childhood in wartime:
carrying my gasmask to school every day
buying savings stamps
remembering my National Registration Number
(ZMGM/136/3 see I can still remember it)
avoiding Careless Talk Digging for Victory
looking for German spies everywhere
Oh yes, I did my bit for my country that long dark winter,
me and Winston and one or two others,
94
‘Blake’s Grand March’ refers to Charles D. Blake’s Clayton’s Grand March (composed c.1877,
sheet music published 1936).
167
wearing my tin hat whenever possible
singing ‘Hang out the Washing on the Siegfried Line’
aircraft-recognition charts pinned to my bedroom wall
...
after coming out of the air raid shelter
listening for the ‘All Clear’ siren
listening to Vera Lynn Dorothy Lamour Allen Jones and The Andrew Sisters
(A, 15)
Martin Stokes describes music as ‘socially meaningful’: it ‘informs our sense of place’,95 as
social boundaries can be created through a shared understanding of music and reference,
creating identities and spaces out of places. For Henri, the place of a particular street and
house in Birkenhead is evoked as a space firmly within his childhood through the discussion
of images and sounds intrinsically linked to that time, and those who read the printed works
with knowledge of the music and musicians he is talking about can thus provide an aural
experience to accompany the words from their own memory. Autobiography supports de
Certeau’s idea that ‘haunted places are the only ones people can live in’.96 Henri even
recognises this himself in ‘Je Suis un Autre’, collected after Henri’s death in Adrian Henri
Selected and Unpublished, Poems 1965-2000. The title is itself a deliberate misremembering
of Arthur Rimbaud’s ‘Je est un autre’, and deals with old age and Henri’s fear of becoming
‘that total stranger’ in his own mind:
this constant useless
barrage of information
songs that only I could know
songs from my childhood
things we did at school
forties pop songs
rise unbidden from my head
(Selected, 292)
Now the music of his childhood is not a link with a community, but rather feeds a sense of
isolation through age.
THE ENTRY OF CHRIST INTO LIVERPOOL (PART ONE OF TWO)
Noise and music abound in ‘The Entry of Christ Into Liverpool’, both the printed poem and
the performance piece created by The Liverpool Scene. The noises build up a sense of the
community as well as representing the procession. The opening prose paragraph gives us
‘children’s voices in the distance. sounds from the river’, placing sound/hearing alongside
sight (‘headscarves. shoppingbaskets. dogs.’), multisensorially setting the scene (TMS3,
95
Martin Stokes, ‘Introduction’, in Ethnicity, Identity and Music: The Musical Construction of Place,
ed. by Marin Stokes (Oxford: Berg, 1994), pp. 1-27, p. 5, 3.
96
Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, trans. by Steven Rendall (Berkeley: University
of California Press, 1988), p. 108.
168
46).97 The poem is topographical, with the first ‘direction’, as it were, being ‘round the
corner into Myrtle St’ (TMS3, 46), starting the procession in the heart of Liverpool 8.98 The
procession begins decisively with ‘then/ down the hill’ (TMS3, 46), and is then again pushed
on by ‘down the hill past the Philharmonic The Labour Exchange/ excited feet crushing the
geraniums in St Luke’s Gardens’ (TMS3, 47). It is interesting which landmarks Henri picks
out, the pub and the place to sign-on, but not, say, the police station. The route does indeed
go downhill (down Hardman Street), with the Gardens being the grounds of St Luke’s
Church on the corner of Berry Street and Leece Street, opposite the top of Bold Street in
Liverpool 1 – the ‘bombed-out church’ from air raids in World War II.
After these initial place names, the poem – and the procession – continues into the city, but
without a specified route. There is a clear drive, with directions such as ‘down the…’
repeated throughout and movement from active verbs – ‘crushing surging carrying me
along’, ‘crowding in’, ‘straining forward’ – as well as descriptions of the crowd’s actions
which build up a picture of bustle and noise (TMS3, 46-8). The urban everyday within which
Henri situates the poem in the opening prose-paragraph is a consistent backdrop: the
procession is mixed in with ‘trafficlights zebracrossings’ and ‘neonsigns’ (TMS3, 47, 48),
and the final post-procession lines tell of the ‘last of the crowds waiting at bus-stops’ with
‘dustmen with big brooms sweeping the gutters’ (TMS3, 48). We know this is Liverpool
from the title, and the poem emphasises a particular topography and details of everyday
urban life.
One inspiration for the poem was the Orange Day processions which used to be a regular
occurrence in Liverpool (and do still happen), and that Roberts remembers going to watch:
Adrian liked the idea – obviously the religious significance of it was not lost on him
but he saw it in a more universal sense of as, you know, if Christ came again what
would it be like and he thought well it would be like an Orange Day procession but
all my friends will be marching instead of all these Protestants. 99
A key part of these processions was the drumming. Roberts recalls that it was Bryan
Dodson, the drummer, who first started accompanying Henri reading the work at
97
This poem, with the painting (fig 5.6) and poster-poem (fig 5.8) of the same name, will be
discussed again in Chapter Five as part of an exploration of the visual aspects of not only Henri’s art
but also his attention to the layout and appearance of words on the page.
98
This is also near Liverpool University’s buildings grouped around Abercromby Square, and the
procession route is similar to the maps of the Rag Week procession found in the Sphinx and
Pantosphinx magazines produced by University students. Henri was well aware of the political power
of marching: in a folder marked ‘Original notes for ‘E. of Christ into L.’ painting & poem 1962-66’
he has included a handbill for anti- anti-immigration march in London (Henri A.VIII.2 (3)), and he
was also a supporter of the CND movement.
99
Interview with Andy Roberts, June 2012.
169
O’Connor’s. The ‘terrific sense of pace and volume and excitement’ of the original poem led
to Dodson playing marching drums behind Henri reading, then Mike Evans ‘played some
stuff’ (presumably the saxophone or trumpet, as he was a brass player, to complement
Henri’s line ‘THE SOUND OF TRUMPETS’), and then Roberts himself decided to add a
further layer of meaning by picking up on Henri’s line ‘the sounds of pipes and drums’ and
adding tin whistle.100 But not just any melody line, the ‘sound of pipes’ is the sound of
Johnny Todd, an old Liverpool folk song or sea shanty, which ‘was one of the tunes that they
used to play at the Orange procession’ (made very familiar at this time as the theme music to
the television programme Z Cars).101 Adding each element gradually built up into the
version which they recorded in 1968.
Whilst they never performed the piece in front of the canvas itself, the inspiration from
watching the Orange Day marches is translated onto canvas and page by Henri and then the
musicians involved returned to that source of inspiration to add an aural element which in
turn develops the text source into a performance piece. One cannot help but read Guy
Debord’s situationist anti-authoritarian agenda of détournement into Henri’s appropriation of
the Orange Order marches, reclaiming his city and his particular area of it, for himself and
his friends in this ‘Entry’. Walking as an act of claiming is an idea, explored in the first
chapter, which is here very important in a political context, as a reaction against the Orange
Order marches.
The Liverpool Scene’s recorded version of ‘The Entry of Christ into Liverpool’ opens with
marching drums, with drum rolls, getting progressively louder and then fading away, as if
the listener were standing still and watching the procession go past. Then Henri begins
reading the poem, and the first ‘scene-setting’ prose paragraph quoted above is read without
any backing. Drums return, in the form of a single percussive line, when the description of
the parade itself begins with Henri’s ‘then/ down the hill’. His voice cues in a trumpet with
‘THE SOUND OF TRUMPETS’, but this accompaniment continues through much of the
piece as a way of marking time, repeating the same two-note phrase as Henri delivers each
image, still in his speaking voice. The capitalized ‘THE MARCHING DRUMS’ does
receive some emphasis, with Henri exclaiming the line and being almost drowned out by
additional percussion and an electric guitar joining the original trumpet. Henri recognises the
importance of the collaboration for his own performance of the text:
100
101
Interview with Andy Roberts, June 2012.
Interview with Andy Roberts, June 2012.
170
The fact that I was reading it with music and that the group was putting music into
the gaps changed its whole emphasis. There’s that hysterical build-up in the middle
and I can’t think that I used to read it like that before the music was added it was just
that they used to make so much noise that I had to yell to get over the top of them. I
would never read it like that if it were not for the music.102
This section is where the real benefit of the aural expression of this piece becomes clear.
Henri’s voice is blended with the jumble of musical instruments and sound effects which
represent the clamour and action of the parade Henri is describing, with the individual
wording of banners (of the poem and painting) ‘read out’, as it were, and further emphasized
by the mixing of the vocal line on the recording so that Henri’s voice comes first from one
speaker and then from the other – the listener receiving (in the recorded version) information
from all sides. All of this crescendos into a cacophony of noise and instruments – Henri’s
words also becoming faster and louder alongside a quickened percussive beat – culminating
with the Guinness advert sections:
GUINNESS IS GOOD
GUINNESS IS GOOD FOR
Masks Masks Masks Masks Masks
GUINNESS IS GOOD FOR YOU
brassbands cheering loudspeakers blaring
clatter of police horses
(TMS3, 48)
On the page, and in a solo reading, the reader or listener can experience only one word or
phrase or line at a time. In the performance piece, Henri’s vocalisation of this section
extends beyond the words on the page, as if they are merely a stage direction, threading the
reading of the Guinness line – ‘Guinness is good for you’ – across a full minute and twenty
seconds, the section as a whole only coming to an end after a final ‘masks’ with an
elongated ‘a’, drawn out to fade, with the rest of the music also fading out here. We have
had two whole minutes of raucous noise accompanying the repetition of ‘masks’, almost
ceasing to be a coherent word and becoming more a noise, an all-encompassing aural
assault.
The final lines of the poem return to a calm speaking voice: Henri reports the scenes of the
aftermath of the parade. Roberts plays a quiet melody line on harmonica (the same
instrument with which he made the car horn sounds earlier), aurally evoking the evening
quiet post-procession, an almost soporific accompaniment which perfectly matches the scene
Henri has written about with ‘streamers newspapers discarded paper hats’ and the ‘last of the
102
Adrian Henri, cited in Conversations, ed. by Mike Davies (Birmingham: Flat Earth Press, 1975),
p. 3.
171
crowds waiting at bus-stops’ (TMS3, 48). The final lines of the poem are quietly spoken.
However, the poem prints the final lines thus:
me
walking home
empty chip-papers drifting round my feet
(TMS3, 48)
The lines as spoken by Henri on The Liverpool Scene recording would be better represented
like this:
Me
Walking home
Alone
Empty chip-papers
Drifting
Round my feet
(Amazing Adventures... CD)
The addition of ‘alone’ and the drawing out of the phrases represents Henri dragging his
feet, deflated after the excitement of the parade. This emphasis on his solitary status is also
in contrast to the plural nature of the groups he lists even after the crowd has broken up:
dustmen, schoolgirls, businessmen, and crowds who wait at the bus-stops together. The
muted aural accompaniment here is in contrast to the cacophony of the main sections. A
final electric guitar phrase, after Henri has finished speaking, full of feedback, also
epitomizes the difference between the main parade (characterized by strong percussion and
musical highlights) and the times without it (solo reading or little accompaniment). The
performance of ‘The Entry of Christ into Liverpool’ thus shows the way a layering of
meanings via different media can heighten the effect of Henri’s words.
CONCLUSION
What this chapter sought to investigate was how music was used by the Merseybeat poets: as
an accompaniment or an exegetical aid; as a way of implying meaning through shorthand or
added emphasis; as part of a totalising experience of poetry as a live event; or as a separate
facet for dissemination of works in other avenues.
Music is also a key aspect in the Merseybeat movement’s construction of social space. Hal
Shaper’s comments on the Scene LP tell us: ‘This is what it’s all about – life along the
Mersey Beat. Now. Aural. This is the setting the poetry needed and wanted, to tell you about
itself and about you.’103 Not only music but a specific time and place of music is, therefore,
crucial as part of a totalising experience of the poetry, and the emphasis on sound is crucial
103
Shaper, Scene LP.
172
to our understanding of the Merseybeat scene and what they sought to achieve. Henri’s
poetry shows this particularly in the way the music evoked always has a purpose for
bringing the audience to his work and augmenting their comprehension. His use of different
genres of music and the name-checking of musicians is part of the public aspect of
Merseybeat, as common cultural references are used to connect with the audience. A social
position can be evoked through specific references, but what is also notable is that the
counter-cultural heroes of ‘Me’ are treated as being of equal value to the British populist
tradition of music hall.
This statement from Patten in 1967 perhaps best encapsulates the importance of vocal and
musical aspects for the Merseybeat poets: ‘It’s not the man, it’s what he’s saying that
interests me – and, of course, how he says it. I like him to sing it!’ (TLS, 16). How he says it
is connected not only to the word choices or images used but also the performance of the
poem itself – with various kinds of musical accompaniment, as in the examples here, or via
the range of vocal techniques and spaces used for performance discussed in the previous
chapter. Either way, through music, oral expression, or background noise, Merseybeat needs
the aural realm to fully connect with and speak (sing?) to the audience.
173
CHAPTER FIVE: VISUAL ART PRACTICE
In Autobiography, ‘Part Two 1957-64’, Adrian Henri comments on some of the modern art
he experienced in this period:
seeing
my first Yves Klein
blue universes in a tiny artgallery
lumpen Paolozzi monsters
Newman horizonlight
Serene dark Rothko
Robbie the Robot
making ‘today’s homes
so different, so appealing’
(A, 36)
However, this does not do justice to the range of his art knowledge.1 Just as the musicians
and composers in ‘Me’ are from a wide range of musical genres, so too do the artists he
mentions in his work represent a variety of visual inspirations: they range from Renaissance
(Leonardo) and high Germanic religious artists (Grunewald), through the nineteenth century
with Impressionism and after (Monet, Cezanne) and key early twentieth century figures
(Gaudi, Magritte) to the contemporary arts scene from Duchamp through to Pollock, Rothko,
and Pop Art.
This chapter will consider a variety of visual aspects which are at play in the work of Henri
and the Merseybeat poets. Henri trained as an artist, attending King’s College, University of
Durham, between 1951 and 1955, where one of his tutors was Richard Hamilton. He worked
as a painter throughout his life, and also taught (as noted earlier, he met Heather Holden, to
whom ‘Love Poem’ is dedicated, when a tutor at Manchester Art School).2 As well as being
a painter, Henri was also a collagist. ‘Merz’ is the ‘combination of all conceivable materials
for artistic purposes,’ wrote Kurt Schwitters, ‘not only of paint and canvas, brush and
palette, but of all materials perceptible to the eye and of all required implements,’ and the
‘artist creates through the choice, distribution and metamorphosis of the materials.’ 3
Schwitters was one of Henri’s ‘favourite artists’, according to his partner Catherine
Marcangeli, partly because of the ‘metamorphic potential’ of his collages: ‘that bit of metro
1
See, for example, his survey of modern art in Adrian Henri, Environments & Happenings (London:
Thames & Hudson, 1974), pp. 7-26, and art criticism such as Adrian Henri, ‘Strategy: Get Arts’
review, Scottish International, 12 (1970), pp. 43-4. For a survey of art in Liverpool, see John Willett,
Art in a City (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2007).
2
Henri exhibited and sold paintings throughout his adult life, and won a number of prizes (such as
Second Prize at the 1972 John Moores Exhibition). See http://www.adrianhenri.com/artistpainter.html [accessed 8 May 2013] for a chronology and examples of his work.
3
Kurt Schwitters, cited in John Elderfield, Kurt Schwitters (London: Thames & Hudson, 1987), p. 50.
174
ticket can become something else’.4 Like Schwitters, Henri’s collage technique employs
visual quotations of the everyday, and his practice involved recording found material: ‘I
carry a notebook everywhere and scribble in it. It’s a pretty constant process. There’s always
something – the odd word, the odd bit – and that’s an on-going process, the raw material’.5
This chapter will consider both collage (from Cubism to Schwitters) and found material
(from Schwitters to Pop Art) as practices which Henri utilises in order to represent the visual
in his work, quoting from his experiences in order to present his audience with an accurate
image of his social space. There is also a third manifestation of Henri’s visual art practice
which is also crucial to an understanding of his work: his role as a Happeningist, inspired by
Allan Kaprow, creating what he called ‘Events’.6 These multidimensional performance
pieces follow that tendency in Merseybeat to take an avant-garde inspiration and repackage
it through British populist traditions, softening it in order to connect and have fun with the
audience, rather than confronting or alienating them.
I WANT TO PAINT
The poem ‘I Want To Paint’ (first published in 1967) is a list of images or situations which
Henri wants to paint. The ideas range from the hyperbolic – ‘I want to paint/ 2000 dead birds
crucified on a background of night’ (TMS1, 51) or ‘10000 shocking pink hearts with your
name on’ (TMS1, 52) – to the impossible:
Thoughts that lie too deep for tears
Thoughts that lie too deep for queers
Thoughts that move at 186000 miles/second
(TMS1, 51)
The poem is full of urban imagery, with details specific to Liverpool:
Enormous pictures of every pavingstone in Canning Street
...
I LOVE YOU across the steps of St. George’s Hall
...
Père Ubu drunk at 11 o’clock at night in Lime Street
(TMS1, 51)
4
Interview with Catherine Marcangeli, April 2013.
Adrian Henri, cited in Mike Davies, Conversations (Birmingham: Flat Earth Press, 1975), p. 3. See
fig 5.1 for an example of a notebook draft, for ‘Liverpool Poems’, showing the evolution of number
four in the sequence: ‘PRAYER FROM A PAINTER TO ALL CAPITALISTS: Open your wallets and repeat
after me/ “HELP YOURSELF!”’ (TMS1, 15).
6
Michael Murphy and Deryn Rees-Jones cite Henri as a key figure in modern British art on two
separate occasions in their introduction to Writing Liverpool – first commenting that he ‘had the
vision and the energy to introduce the “happening” to Britain’ and second that Henri exemplifies ‘the
streak of surrealism that informs a good deal of the work of the city’s writers and artists’ (Michael
Murphy and Deryn Rees-Jones, eds., Writing Liverpool: Essays and Interviews [Liverpool, Liverpool
University Press, 2007], p. 7, 17).
5
175
There are also additions to the 1968 Tonight at Noon version of ‘I Want To Paint’, such as
adding in a number of people to the end of this first stanza. So, alongside the portrait of ‘The
Installation of Roger McGough to the Chair of Poetry at Oxford’ (TMS1, 51), there is
‘Adrian Mitchell with 15 poems in the Top 20’, and ‘Butchers throwing bits of Jeff Nuttall
and Robin Page at the audience’ (TAN, 21). The line ‘Brian Patten writing poems with a
flamethrower on disused ferryboats’ (TMS1, 51) combines a Liverpool reference with a
reference to Yves Klein, who, as cited in Henri’s Environments and Happenings, ‘made
paintings using a flame-thrower’.7 The poem ends with an anaphoric list:
I want to paint
Pictures that children can play hopscotch on
Pictures that can be used as evidence at Murder trials
Pictures that can be used to advertise cornflakes
Pictures that can be used to frighten naughty children
Pictures worth their weight in money
Pictures that tramps can live in
Pictures that children would find in their stockings on Christmas morning
Pictures that teenage lovers can send each other
I want to paint
pictures.
(TMS1, 52)
These are domestic, quotidian, and vary from the simple (a picture that could advertise
cornflakes) to the extravagant (a picture as a house). Unlike Frank O’Hara, whose poem
‘Why I Am Not A Painter’ this recalls (and which will be discussed later in this chapter),
Henri was a painter. Therefore when Henri uses either painting or poetry, it is in order to
achieve something appropriate to that medium. Of ‘Love Poem’ Henri wrote that: ‘poetry
consists for me of a means to say something that it would be impossible to paint’ (TAN, 72).
His specific example here is the lines: ‘Kurt Schwitters smiles as he picks up the two pink
bus tickets/ we have just thrown away’ (TMS1, 40) as being difficult to paint: ‘even if you
could paint two pink bus tickets convincingly to scale with the figure how could you make it
clear they had been thrown away by two people who had just walked out of the picture?’
(TAN, 72). ‘I Want To Paint’ is, in the end, about the difference between language and
image. You can’t paint thoughts, and the hyperbole and amassing of images is more
indicative of his exuberant need to re-present everything in his world than an actual listing of
supposed paintings. Painting in this poem is used both to represent the desire to
communicate and to articulate the differences inherent in painting and writing.
‘Lakeland Poems’ (1968) carries the dedication ‘for Kurt Schwitters, William Wordsworth,
and Fiona Stirling Macfarlane’ (TAN, 13), These poems are inspired by and for a European
avant-garde painter, a Romantic English poet, and a personal friend, and within the poems,
7
Henri, Environments, p. 140
176
we are told: ‘The landscape is full of other people’s paintings!’ (TAN, 13). Wordsworth, of
course, made the Lake District popular with tourists: ‘I wanted to put a polythene daffodil on
Wordsworth’s/ grave but didn’t know where it was, anyway’ (TAN, 13). The poem also
records Henri’s visit to Schwitters’ Merzbarn, framed as a quest through a reference to the
fifteenth century L’Morte D’Arthur:
At length came we to the Chapel Perilous/but
the King was dead/Empty barn smelling of
damp/a pile of dusty 78’s/camera eaten by
rust/an unfinished landscape twisted and buckled/
And the wall, half-finished./We said Goodbye
to the old man with plusfours and his dog
& cat & 6 hens & 3 geese/and his memories.
(TAN, 14)
As this suggests, a poem can be another type of collage, another way of presenting the
reader with visual images. John Berger’s Ways of Seeing reminds us that ‘seeing comes
before words’ and so ‘it is seeing which establishes our place in the surrounding world’. 8
This is, in part, the sense that Henri recreates in his poems. 9
Writing after Henri’s death for the Selected and Unpublished collection, Patten described the
inter-involvement of Henri’s verbal and visual imagination:
The poet in him wrote poems containing images that the painter in him wanted to
paint, and the painter in him painted images that the poet wanted to write. But really
it did not matter which part of his spirit received the images first – Adrian would
rush off with them to wherever it is Imagination cooks up its feasts, and, generous as
ever, would return to share them with us all.10
This statement is important for two reasons: first, it recognises Henri’s movement between
media; second, it emphasises sharing and communication.11 Thus ‘The Entry of Christ into
Liverpool’ is important not only for its use of visual quotations of the everyday, but also
because it is an example of an idea which bears fruit in a number of different modes – the
painting and the poem are interconnected, the latter born out of notes for the former. There
are also series, such as Death of a Bird in the City, which see the same idea reworked in a
8
John Berger, Ways of Seeing (London: Penguin, 2008), p. 7.
See also this description of Henri: ‘The lips purse, a sharp intake of breath: he has seen something he
likes, a girl standing by a bus-stop, or a summer evening darkening over treetops. He sips it in fast,
Pantagruel consuming the world’ (Michael Kustow, ‘Notations for an Audio-Visual Album’, in
Adrian Henri, Adrian Henri: painter/poet [London: Fanfare Press, 1968], n.p.).
10
Brian Patten, in Selected, p. 7.
11
For a survey of the links between poetry and painting, and the issues surrounding those links, see,
for example, Rensselaer W. Lee, Ut Pictura Poesis: The Humanistic Theory of Painting (New York:
W. W. Norton and Company, 1967), Franklin R. Rogers, Painting and Poetry: Form, Metaphor, and
the Language of Literature (Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 1985), and Wendy Steiner, The
Colors of Rhetoric: Problems in the Relation between Modern Literature and Painting (Chicago: The
University of Chicago Press, 1982).
9
177
number of different ways. George Melly describes the paintings as ‘the most affecting image
of the sixties’:
in each case a bird, inevitably white, once alive, then stuffed, is crucified by Henri
against the picture, desolate, partly real plumage, partly white paint, sometimes a
little blood. Sometimes too, some of the metal armature breaks through like a bone.12
Henri painted several of these, including one where the white bird is attached to a real door.
The door is stencilled with the phrase ‘The Night Beware of That Dark Door’, a quotation
from Djuna Barnes’ novel Nightwood.13 ‘Death of a Bird in the City II’ is printed in the
Collected Poems with a reproduction of a drawing entitled ‘Death of a Bird in the City
1986’:
The last unbearable white bird
Spotlit, slowly struggling threshing against blackness
Crucified on the easel
SCHWEPPES
GUINNESS IS...
The lights are going out... 14
These references recall the section of ‘The Entry of Christ into Liverpool’, which will be
discussed later in this chapter, where between the Guinness advertisement sections there is a:
white bird dying unnoticed in a corner
splattered feathers
blood running merged with the neonsigns
in a puddle
(TMS3, 47-8)
The fact that the poem is called ‘Death of a Bird in the City II’ links the poem and the
paintings together as being part of the same series. The two are also linked in the cover of
Underdog 4 (fig 5.2), where the words ‘death of a bird in the city’ and Henri’s name are
printed over the top of a painted white bird taken from a drawing from the series.15
In terms of the inspirations behind the series, Henri is quoted as saying that the paintings
came from a ‘mis-reading’ of a photograph of a work by Marcel Duchamp: ‘For some
reason it suggested to me a bird. I played around with this image and came up with the idea
12
George Melly, ‘Pop & Protest: Adrian Henri’s Pop Art of the Sixties’, in Adrian Henri: Art of the
Sixties (Whitford Fine Art: London, 1997), p. 4. Melly’s choice of ‘crucified’ refers to both the death
and also the way the wings are spread open.
13
This novel was clearly important to Henri, as it is used again in a collaborative work by Henri and
Patten, ‘Night: A Poem With and Without Words’, performed by the two as a dramatic dialogue at
Hope Hall in the 1960s (Patten/1/1/32/17).
14
Adrian Henri, Collected Poems: 1967-85 (London: Allison & Busby, 1986), p. 4.
15
McGough wrote a poem with the same title for the 1962 ‘Death of a Bird in the City’ Event at Hope
Hall – see Willett, p. 185. There is also an unattributed poem entitled ‘Death of a Bird (for A. Henri)’,
dated September 1963, which I found loose in Henri C 1/8. The poem is full of allusions to Henri’s
work.
178
of a white bird which was fluttering – and dying in a city somewhere.’16 The paintings
include text – ‘night’ and ‘bird’ on the instance included in the 1961 John Moores Exhibition
– and some actual birds, as mentioned above (see figs 5.3 and 5.4). This line from ‘I Want
To Paint’ also recalls the idea: ‘I want to paint/ 2000 dead birds crucified on a background of
night’ (TMS1, 51). Henri also said that the series was inspired by ‘a translation of Garcia
Lorca’s Poet in New York. There’s a whole section on birds dying in cities in that.’17 His
notebooks also contain a note on ‘ideas for painting’ from 1961 which cites another
inspiration, Eric Hosking’s photographs of owls, and he specifically states that there will be
‘Associated words (NIGHT, BIRD, DEATH, etc.) in background’ (see fig 5.5). Neither the
‘Entry’ nor ‘Death of a Bird in the City II’ could be described as ekphrasis of the paintings
of the same name, but rather each is a different interpretative instance of their respective
‘original’ ideas. By this I mean that Henri does not write poems reflecting on the paintings,
nor paintings illustrating the poems, but rather he places visuo-spatial and verbal
manifestations of an idea on the same level. As Willy Russell said:
Adrian Henri the poet and Adrian Henri the painter were one and the same, the
painter’s eye and the poet’s tongue a bonded, inseparable harmony whether turned
upon the dreich of a northern afternoon, the shimmering African plains or the dull
unlovely street suddenly kissed and made fine by the step of a smiling girl.18
This chapter considers the various ways in which Henri’s visual practice is manifested in his
work, in painting, poetry, and performance, and how the verbal and the visual are indeed
approached by Henri as ‘one and the same’. The previous chapter started a discussion of
another ‘series’ – ‘The Entry of Christ into Liverpool’ – in its manifestations as a
performance piece by The Liverpool Scene. There the aural aspects of the poem were
brought out in relation to the performance piece; this chapter will consider the painting of
the same name alongside printed instances. As the audience (viewer, reader, listener)
experiences each instance of the work, the separate visual, verbal, and aural elements
become interlinked to add up to a total idea of what the ‘Entry’ is.
16
Adrian Henri, in Adrian Henri: Paintings 1953-1998, ed. by Frank Milner (Liverpool: Bluecoat
Press, 2000), p. 42.
17
Adrian Henri, in Paintings 1953-1998, p. 44. Henri may have been thinking of ‘Blind Panorama of
New York’, with its ‘birds/covered with ash’, ‘the delicate creatures of the air/ that spill fresh blood in
the inextinguishable darkness’, or of ‘New York (Office and Denunciation)’ which lists a number of
animals which ‘Every day in New York, they slaughter’, including ‘two thousand pigeons’ (Federico
Garcia Lorca, Poet in New York, trans. by Greg Simon and Steven F. White [London: Penguin, 2002],
pp. 73, 131).
18
Willy Russell, in Selected, p. 145.
179
THE ENTRY OF CHRIST INTO LIVERPOOL (PART TWO OF TWO)
Henri’s painting The Entry of Christ Into Liverpool in 1964 (fig 5.6) directly references the
Belgian painter James Ensor and his painting The Entry of Christ into Brussels in 1889 (fig
5.7), both in the title and the stencilled addition to the canvas itself: ‘Homage to James
Ensor’. In her monograph on Ensor’s painting, Patricia G. Berman states that it is: ‘one of
the most important and enigmatic paintings of the later nineteenth century … A
phantasmagoria of color and motion’.19 The painting is crowded with celebrating people,
banners, and dignitaries watching the procession. Both paintings have the people facing
towards the front, with Christ in the background, almost in the centre of the frame but not
quite, and riding a donkey as in his entry into Jerusalem. In Ensor’s painting there is a great
sense of movement, with the people passing the spectator out to the bottom right of the
frame: the revellers cannot and have not seen Christ and are, therefore, unconcerned by his
Entry. Whilst Henri’s painting places the people (all portraits of friends and heroes) fully
face-on to the viewer, the irony of Ensor’s painting is lost, as Henri groups the banners and
people close together with Christ, creating a sense that they are celebrating the Entry
together.
Comparisons between the two paintings are obvious – the subject matter, the additive nature
of the composition, the personal touches – and the links between each painting and the poem
‘The Entry of Christ into Liverpool’ are also clear.20 Edward Lucie-Smith points up the link
between the ‘Entry’ poem and the painting in British Poetry since 1945: a footnote informs
the reader that Henri has painted a ‘large picture of this subject, intended as a tribute to
James Ensor’, who was ‘fascinated by the imagery of masks’.21 This is the first version of
the poem printed in a book, but the first instance of the poem in print is the poster-poem
designed for Henri’s solo show at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in 1968. The design
includes a reproduction of Henri’s painting at the top (fig 5.8a), with the text centred on the
page (as it is in other printed versions) and uses a variety of different fonts. The text of the
poem is almost identical in each instance, apart from the poster-poem’s splitting of Henri’s
connected words such as: ‘dandelionseeds blowing from the wasteground’ (TMS3, 46). What
19
Patricia G. Berman, James Ensor: Christ’s Entry into Brussels in 1889 (Los Angeles: Getty
Publications, 2002), p. 1.
20
See Berman, p. 14, and Diane Lesko, James Ensor: The Creative Years (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1985), p. 144. Personal touches for Ensor include images of his mother and
grandmother as the two masked figures with white bonnets to the right hand side of the painting.
When Henri writes of ‘hideous masked Breughel faces of old ladies in the crowd’ (TMS3, 46), it is
almost certainly these to which he refers. Lesko sees Ensor’s self-portrait in the yellow clown (on the
left of the painting), whilst Berman believes that Ensor painted himself as Christ. Henri’s Christ is
also modelled on Ensor.
21
Edward Lucie-Smith, ed., British Poetry since 1945 (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1970), p. 349.
180
is different across all of the versions discussed here is the typography and spacing – the
actual look of the text on the page. A handwritten note by Henri on the Archive photocopy
of the Lucie-Smith book reads: ‘the spacing of this poem could be much more generous
when properly printed’ (A VIII.3 [2]), which demonstrates the importance of the layout to
him. There are also other differences between this and The Mersey Sound version, such as
whether the capitalised phrases use ALL CAPITALS (in British Poetry since 1945) or
SMALL CAPITALS
(in The Mersey Sound).
Ulricke Becks-Malorny sees Ensor’s painting, with its grotesque masks and caricatures of
clerical and military figures, as political and autobiographical in that the figures represent
Ensor’s anger at the society which rejected him. 22 The painting’s importance for Henri (in
both painting and poem) comes from two particular aspects: first, the multiple individual
portraits, and second, the use of banners and adverts. Henri’s painting is entirely comprised
of portraits of friends and heroes, in a positive and celebratory grouping: dominating the
foreground are Alfred Jarry’s Ubu and Charles Mingus in a kimono-like gown; Roger
McGough stands with his hands in his pockets on the right hand side of the painting; Brian
Patten peers over Mingus’s right shoulder.23 The poem also tells us of the characters in the
procession:
familiar faces among the crowd
faces of my friends the shades of Pierre Bonnard and
Guilliame Apollinaire
Jarry cycling carefully through the crowd
(TMS3, 47)
The background of the painting is also clearly a view down Lime Street, towards St.
George’s Hall (left) and the railway station (right). The poem ‘The Entry of Christ into
Liverpool’ also tells us that the ‘LONG LIVE SOCIALISM’ banner is ‘stretched against the
blue sky/ over St George’s Hall’ (TMS3, 46) as it is in Henri’s painting.24 Henri calls the
22
See Ulricke Becks-Malorny, James Ensor 1860-1949: Masks, Death, and the Sea (Köln: Taschen,
1999), pp. 48-9. See also Berman, pp. 3-6 on the Brussels painting as a subversion of two different
contemporary paintings: Jan Verhas’s The Review of the Schoolchildren in 1878 (1880), a Naturalist
image of schoolgirls in procession in front of Belgian royalty (a highly symbolically patriotic
painting, representing the success of modern Belgium), and Hans Markart’s The Entry of Charles V
into Antwerp (1878), in ‘joyous entry’ tradition, featuring the Holy Roman Emperor riding into the
city in high state.
23
In the Selected & Unpublished Poems Catherine Marcangeli includes a pencil sketch entitled
Mingus (1961), which shows the jazz musician in a similar robe (Selected, p. 196). There are also
echoes of Entry in Henri’s painting The Day of the Dead, Hope Street (1998): there are banners,
placards, and flags, and dead friends and heroes, such as Henri’s wife Joyce or the author Malcolm
Lowry, whose 1947 novel Under the Volcano is set on the Day of the Dead. Lowry was, like Henri,
originally from ‘over the water’ from Liverpool (New Brighton, on the same peninsula as
Birkenhead), and it is not difficult to imagine that Henri would have known the novel. See Paintings
1953-1998, pp. 58-60 and 130 for an enumeration of the cast of both paintings.
24
For other examples of loco-specificity in this poem, see Chapter Four, p 168-9.
181
painting a ‘visual diary’ of the years 1962-4 (specifically included in the long title), with the
figures: ‘done on the additive principle for two years and sometimes I had to add beards or
subtract them or change the girls’ hair-colour or style. People I quarrelled with even got
painted out’ (TAN, 73).25 On the other hand, whilst Henri’s figures are not masked, the poem
proclaims ‘masks’ over and over again. The section of The Liverpool Scene’s piece with
Henri shouting ‘masks’ repeatedly over the top of the musicians, discussed in the preceding
chapter, is an oral representation of these crowds. This is a clear link to Ensor, both to the
crowd of the Brussels painting, but also to Ensor’s family’s mask shop and to other artworks
by him which contain numerous masks. Berman cites ‘the Symbolist poet Émile Verhaeren’
as giving Ensor the epithet ‘the painter of masks’,26 and Henri repeats this in the poem’s
statement (like a shop window description): ‘J. Ensor, Fabriqueur de Masques’ (TMS3, 47).
The homage is also seen in the painting’s explicit politics: Ensor’s ‘Vive le Sociale’ is
translated into ‘Long Live Socialism’, with the banners in similar positions in the two
paintings, and there are other political references and topical images in Henri’s Entry such as
the CND banner or the flags of Jamaica and Trinidad which had recently gained
independence from Britain.27
The poster-poem is obviously a visual experience. Most of the fonts used for the banners in
the poster-poem stand out from the main body of text – deliberately catching the viewer’s
eye, representing the banners in the painting. There are twelve references to banners and the
like in the poem, such as the following, printed in the poster-poem to resemble graffiti or
handwritten banners:
Keep Britain White
End the War in Vietnam
God Bless Our Pope
(see fig 5.8b)
The stencil font is also used for the Guinness adverts:
GUINNESS IS GOOD
GUINNESS IS GOOD FOR
Masks Masks Masks Masks Masks
GUINNESS IS GOOD FOR YOU
(TMS3, 48)
25
George Melly recalls that: ‘At this period my wife was experimenting by dying her hair, and over
the two years the painting took to complete Adrian conscientiously re-coloured it every time’ (Art of
the Sixties, p. 3). Furthermore, for the year 1963 in The Art of Adrian Henri 1955-85, ed. by Josie
Henderson (London: Expression Printers, 1986), p. 16, there is a photo of Henri standing in front of
the painting, which also shows the additive principle, as the painting was not ‘finished’ until 1964 –
the canvas itself tells us it is ‘The Entry of Christ into Liverpool in 1964 Adrian Henri Homage to
James Ensor 1962-64’.
26
Berman, p. 9.
27
Another political source has been explored in Chapter Four, of the Orange Order processions which
provided the impetus for the ‘Entry’ (where the conceit of Ensor’s is Carnival, from the masks).
182
This quotation, from The Mersey Sound, centres every line of the main procession (with the
opening and closing frames left-aligned), as does British Poetry since 1945. In the posterpoem, the Guinness adverts are indented but left-aligned, like this:
Masks
GUINNESS IS GOOD
GUINNESS IS GOOD FOR
Masks
Masks
Masks
GUINNESS IS GOOD FOR YOU
Masks
(see fig 5.8c)
This, coupled with the stand-out font, makes the additive nature of the repeated phrase more
obvious. This version may be the closest textual representation of Henri’s original idea.
Henri said that the poem grew out of notes for a painting. He was: ‘collecting all kinds of
information and a lot was just written on pieces of paper’:
There were things like the Guinness sign in Lime Street that went on and off one
letter at a time. I found these bits of paper years later and started to work on it and it
turned into a poem.28
As early as 1957, Henri recorded the ‘Guinness is good for you’ advertising slogan in his
notebook and, more specifically, the Lime Street hoarding which lit the phrase up
sequentially (fig 5.9). Interestingly, a very early poem by Patten, preserved in a 1961/2
notebook in his Archive, contains something very similar: the word ‘GUINNESS’ appears
with each letter crossed through, representing the Lime Street sign flashing on and off (see
fig 5.10). Patten’s ‘Letter from the Editor’ for Underdog 5 tells the readership that ‘while we
are open to any creative work we are more concerned with writers involved with the city &
its postnobills / HALT / guinessisgoodforyou reality’ (Underdog 5, n.p.), showing how
pervasive this advert was in the experience of the city.
VISUAL QUOTATIONS OF THE EVERYDAY
Two pages of notes preserved in the Archive entitled ‘Notes on Cities’ appear to be one of
the earliest drafts for the ‘Entry’: the first page has headings for ‘literature’ and ‘music’
about cities, and then the second page (fig 5.11) contains sections which appear in the poem
or painting itself – the Guinness advert, a description of Ensor as Christ – and there is also a
list of urban visual and textual instances – ‘drawings on walls drawings on pavements’,
‘HAVE AN EGG MEAL TONIGHT’ (Henri A VIII.2(4) – which show the process of
accumulation which would be transferred into both the poem and painting.
28
Adrian Henri, in Davies, p. 3.
183
What Henri’s use of adverts and specific quotations from the everyday also brings to mind is
Pop Art. Henri saw Richard Hamilton as his ‘most obvious influence’, although he ‘didn’t
realise till some years later the implications of some of the things he’d done at King’s with
us’ (TAN, 77). Pop Art, a phrase coined by Lawrence Alloway, had its first British
expression in Hamilton’s collage Just What is it that Makes Today’s Homes so Different, so
Appealing?, which appeared at the 1956 exhibition This is Tomorrow. The notebook list
which is reproduced at the beginning of this thesis cites ‘Hamilton’s teaching’ and ‘This is
Tomorrow’ as the first two of the ‘Things which have influenced me’ (Henri C1/8). Pop Art
can be either ironic or celebratory (or somehow poised between the two) in its appropriation
of ‘ready-mades’ and consumer culture – David McCarthy described Richard Hamilton’s
use of adverts in Just What is it... as ‘almost deadpan … at once ironic and sincere, a duality
that exists in most Pop art.’29 Henri’s use of adverts and brand names was clearly
celebratory, embracing modern popular culture: ‘The pop artist stands with one foot in the
art gallery and the other in the supermarket.’30
When Jeff Nuttall refers to the ‘whimsy of the commonplace’ in British Pop Art, he
particularly mentions Peter Blake and David Hockney as exemplars.31 The ‘commonplace’ is
also the most important aspect to Henri’s visual art practice. Although Frank Milner calls it
‘mundane consumerism’,32 Henri’s use of these popular cultural images links the works,
both paintings and poems, to Liverpool, and is a way of recreating social space. Henri
describes his approach as having ‘more to do with pram wheels than chrome hubcaps’,33
signalling a domesticity rather than a look towards America. However, Robert Rauschenberg
and Jasper Johns are acknowledged influences (they are in the notebook list, ‘R’berg +
Johns’ [Henri C1/8], and also appear in the poems). Lucie-Smith described the two
American painters as ‘the link between Abstract Expressionism and the Pop Art which was
to follow’, and as ‘the twin standard-bearers of the Dada revival’,34 three movements from
which Henri took inspiration. Lucie-Smith’s introduction to The Art of Adrian Henri 195585 states that ‘he parades rather than conceals his indebtedness to other artists’ precisely
29
David McCarthy, Movements in Modern Art: Pop Art (London: Tate Gallery Publishing, 2000), p.
7. I have also found High & Low an excellent survey of popular culture’s interactions with art: Kirk
Varnedoe, and Adam Gopnik, High & Low: Modern Art and Popular Culture (New York: The
Museum of Modern Art, New York and Harry N. Abrams, 1990).
30
Adrian Henri, in Paintings 1953-1998, p. 11.
31
Jeff Nuttall, Bomb Culture (London: MacGibbon & Kee, 1968), p. 128. For example, Blake’s On
The Balcony (1955-7) and Self-Portrait with Badges (1961), as well as the cover of the Beatles’ Sgt.
Pepper, are loaded with consumer culture and popular cultural images.
32
Frank Milner, in Intro to Adrian Henri NMGM, p. 10.
33
Adrian Henri, cited in Paintings 1953-1998, p. 10.
34
Edward Lucie-Smith, Art Today: From Abstract Expressionism to Superrealism (Oxford: Phaidon
Press, 1977), p. 147.
184
because ‘he regards the experience of art as part of personal experience.’35 Although inspired
by a range of artists, it is the modernist collage medium which is most important to his
aesthetic in the 1960s. Collage in twentieth century art began with the Cubists and papiers
collés, where Pablo Picasso and George Braque applied coloured paper or newsprint to their
paintings in order to represent objects but also to highlight the space of the painting. It was
this dichotomy of reality and representation which was taken up by later artists. In Berlin
Dada, photomontage used cut-up photographs ‘in provocative ways’, alongside newspaper,
drawings, and ‘whatever happened to be lying around’, in order to ‘confront a crazy world
with its own image’.36 One of the reasons that the Dada artists liked collage was because it
‘displaces traditional creativity and artistic expression’,37 highlighting that which the artist
has not created, just as Marcel Duchamp did with his ‘ready-mades’. Later artists such as
Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns also used words and objects in their painting, using
found objects as the ‘detritus of the urban landscape’.38
This sense of collage – as literal quotations from the everyday world – is recognised by
Henri in an article in Underdog, entitled ‘Schwitters, the “Nowness” of Rauschenberg and
the Portobello Road School’. He sees Kurt Schwitters as accepting:
urban rubbish impartially, with love, accepting chance with the dignity of the last
aristocrat playing Russian Roulette. His work records what was on the streets of
Hanover in 1920 or London in 1942. Young American painters are similarly
concerned to create a picture of NOW from the controlled obsolescence of the
American scene.
(Patten/6/1/6)
To discuss his use of found objects, John Elderfield uses the metaphor of Schwitters as ‘a
traveller to strange lands, bringing back with him a collection of exotic souvenirs’, but he
does qualify this statement, adding that: ‘of course, the lands he visited were familiar
ones’.39 Dorothea Dietrich believes that Schwitters ‘treats his objects like ruins’,40 and that
the ‘maker of collages’ is one ‘who salvages fragments of the past’.41 However, the found
objects which appear in, for example, Henri’s Small Fairground Image 2 (1962), which
includes actual prizes and flyers from the stalls at Rhyl Fairground where he worked, are not
so much salvaging the past as celebrating the present. Certainly, the intention is also to
preserve this for the future, but it is again about making present his own social space in its
35
Edward Lucie-Smith, in Art of Adrian Henri 1955-85, p. 10.
Hans Richter, Dada: Art and Anti-Art (London: Thames & Hudson, 1997), p. 114.
37
Dorothea Dietrich, The Collage of Kurt Schwitters: Tradition and Innovation (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 3.
38
Dorothy Kosinski, Dialogues: Duchamp, Cornell, Johns, Rauschenberg (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 2005), p. 13.
39
Elderfield, p. 57.
40
Dietrich, p. 69.
41
Dietrich, p. 47.
36
185
own time. Therefore, where Elderfield sees ‘a kind of spiritual homelessness’42 in
Schwitters’s fragments, Henri’s collages do rather the opposite, being another way in which
Henri celebrates his relationships and his life in Liverpool and beyond.
Elderfield does, however, discuss the ‘specific, identifiable references’ in early works such
as Das Sternenbild (1920), and refers to ‘an almost diaristic method’ in some collages,
creating ‘miniature epistles of everyday life’.43 Henri’s ‘Welcome to my world’, an epigraph
to Tonight at Noon, similarly asserts the use of found materials as social documentary and
personal diary:
‘Don’t find me’
snarl the poems
from the headlines
‘Ne me trouvez
pas’ cry
the objects
from the beaches.
(TAN, viii)
This quality is also evident in the largest group of collages Henri produced, ‘the annual New
Year’s cards, collages representative of what he’d been up to the previous year’,44 such as
that reproduced on the cover of Wish You Were Here. One of the reasons Henri saw collage
and assemblage as ‘exciting’ is because of ‘how much personal content can go into a work
of art and not violate its universal validity’ (TAN, 71). Collages can ‘echo reality’ (we can
identify the bits and pieces, the printed ephemera, text, and images, which come together to
embody that year’s travels and events) but also reimagine it: ‘If you’re caught between two
different places, you can bring them together in collage. Same with people … You want both
Mingus and Patten so you bring them together.’45 And just as the paintings and collages
often include literal details of the space he inhabited – the Liverpool 8 Four Seasons
Painting (1964), or Small Fairground Image 2 (1962), mentioned above46 – so too do the
poems. ‘Fairground Poem’ is a jumble of quotations and referents to build up the sense of
the fairground atmosphere. Specific lyric quotations, for example, build up the fairground
soundscape:
42
Elderfield, p. 62.
See Elderfield, pp. 63-4, 71.
44
Interview with Catherine Marcangeli, April 2013.
45
Interview with Catherine Marcangeli, April 2013.
46
The drawings and still lifes of salad, flowers, and meat from the late 1960s to the 1970s come from
the same impetus to record. One of these, Painting 1 (1972) a photo-realistic composition of cut
flowers and butcher’s cuts, received Second Prize at the John Moores Exhibition in 1972, and Meat
Painting (In Memoriam René Magritte) (1967) caused controversy at the 1967 John Moores
Exhibition when the Gallery wanted to purchase the painting but the Council’s advisory board vetoed
the decision.
43
186
Deafened by music from all sides
Johnny, remember...
She’s a square,
Baby, I don’t care...
(TAN, 19)
Henri presents the lyrics on the page as separated from the rest of the poem, indented and
italicised. This same layout is used for lines of dialogue and shouts from the Fairground in
the previous section, linking them as aural memories (including slight misquotations).
Schwitters not only used fragments of actual packaging and advertisements on paper (such
as Bild mit Raumgewächsen/Bild mit 2 kleinen Hunden [1920, 1939], or Untitled [This is to
Certify that] [1942] when he was living in England, recognisably made from Bassett’s sweet
packaging and bus tickets), but also collected what Elderfield calls ‘banalities’,47 the slogans
and found phrases which also appear in Henri’s work. Schwitters’ ‘London Symphony’
creates ‘a narrative of the city’48 through its words:
Preston Preston Preston Preston
Bank
Bovril the power of beef
Bovril is good for you
John Pearce
Riverside 1698
What you want is Watney’s ... 49
Adverts are placed next to each other, building up the text in the same way as one
experiences textual sources visually. Henri recreates this in ‘Piccadilly Drawing’ and his
early stream-of-consciousness television drawings.50 This technique also appears in the
poetry, as in ‘Part Two 1957-64’ of Autobiography:
painting huge canvases of Piccadilly
Guinness Clock MOTHER’S PRIDE
bright garden yellow flowers grey buildings
huge hoardings for eggs or cornflakes
DAFFODILS ARE NOT REAL
scrawled defiantly across the middle
(A, 37)51
The ‘Manchester Poem’ section of ‘Love Poem’ has already been quoted in both Chapter
One and Chapter Four as an example of Henri’s amassing and appropriation of his heroes:
‘Our love is watched over by all my masters’ (TMS1, 39). The poem is also full of common
47
Elderfield, p. 98-9.
Emma Chambers, ‘Schwitters in Britain’, in Schwitters in Britain, ed. by Emma Chambers and
Karin Orchard (London: Tate Gallery Publishing, 2013), pp. 6-17, p. 14.
49
Kurt Scwhitters, ‘London Symphony’, in Three Stories, ed. by Jasia Reichardt (London: Tate
Publishing, 2010), p. 17.
50
See Paintings 1953-1998, pp. 38-41.
51
This is Piccadilly Gardens in Manchester rather than Piccadilly in London.
48
187
cultural referencing, mentioning brands as shorthands, as when he says he has seen ‘You and
Père Ubu holding hands in Piccadilly/ Walking off into the COCA COLA sunset’ (TMS1, 38).
‘Love Poem’ is a series of small poems, with notes in the margin. One marginal note tells us
that what follows will be an ‘Assemblage of Objects and Mementoes’. It begins:
An empty Colgate tube
An almond with ALMOND written on it
breakfastpink gingham shirt & red waistcoat like tomatoes
a bar of rock lettered all through with your name and a plastic flower
a pair of your old navyblue schooldrawers
an empty Drambuie bottle & an empty packet of export cigarettes
a signed copy of this poem ...
(TMS1, 39)
Each of these is an object or an image which is included as being representative of their love
affair. This accumulation of images produces a personal love poem which is also public:
I’ve discovered that even the most personal section [‘Assemblage…’] means
something to most other people because nobody else has exchanged these objects
but everyone in love treasures some sort of small meaningless mementoes and
recognises this quality if it’s clearly and simply put.
(TAN, 72)
The irony of this is recognised in ‘Love Poem’, where ‘ANY RECORD IN THE TOP 20
ANYTIME IS OUR TUNE’
(TMS1, 38). By using brand names and adverts, his poems can be
specific and personal but also general and universal at the same time.52
Melly calls Henri’s quotations from the everyday ‘fragments of a journal’,53 and the label of
‘notebook poet’54 is particularly apposite here, given Henri’s practice of recording ideas,
images, and memories in his notebooks. Henri said that ‘Collages gave me the opportunity
to play with ideas before thinking about doing a finished picture’,55 and the same could be
said of the verbal/textual collages which appear as drafts in his notebooks. Lists – what
Jonathan Raban referred to as ‘primary-coloured litanies’56 – are important in Henri’s work.
There are several examples of lists in the Archive which are clearly drafts for poems, such as
the lists of names which I have already discussed in relation to the creation of ‘Me’ (see fig
4.1a and b). One of the most notable things about the first part of the Liverpool University
Henri Archive (given, when Henri was still alive, in 1983) is the organisation of the papers
52
Adverts and brand names are often utilised by Henri for their specificity: in ‘See The Conkering
Heroine Come’, the leaves are not just green, but specifically ‘the colour of the green sweets in
Mackintosh’s Weekend’ (TMS3, 51).
53
Melly, ‘Pop & Protest’, p. 4.
54
Catherine Marcangeli, in Selected, p. xiv.
55
Adrian Henri, in Paintings 1953-1998, p. 62.
56
Jonathan Raban, The Society of the Poem (London: Harrap, 1971), p. 77.
188
by Henri himself. The bundle of papers surrounding Autobiography contains manuscript
versions of the poem and sections at various stages of completion (as well as poems which
were not included in the final version), but also includes the notes which were part of the
composition process. For example, one page of notes, headed ‘1962-64’, lists 24 Falkner
Square and 64 Canning Street alongside names such as Pete Brown, Hawkins/Byrne, the
Clayton Squares, and Heather H, perhaps as aides memoire for writing the poem for these
years (see fig 5.12). Elsewhere in the bundle, there are lists of songs, albums, and artists, and
two pages listing plants and their months of flowering. The book’s series of vignettes
centred around a person or a place (such as ‘Allen singing washing the morning dishes’ [A,
40]) evoke a time but also a space, and the fact that Henri chose to keep these pages – and
include them in a bundle on Autobiography – shows the importance for him of the poem as a
documentary record.
As well as the Pop Art links in the use of adverts, another American connection is important
here, in terms of recording and listing: Frank O’Hara. The narrative of ‘The Day Lady
Died’, with its record of mundane activities – such as ‘I go get a shoeshine’ or ‘I walk up the
muggy street beginning to sun/ and have a hamburger and a malted’57 – is echoed at the
beginning of City:
Got up went to the telephone bought some pies and rolls for lunch thinking of you
tried to phone you they said you weren’t there came home made some coffee had
my lunch thinking of you
(C, 2)
O’Hara’s poem gives specifics of consumer culture (he lists the shops he goes into, and what
he buys), because he was concerned with recording moments as they happen. Indeed, as
Geoff Ward states: ‘Whatever their differences, the Black Mountain, Beat and New York
Schools shared a commitment to poetry as individualistic expression’, with ‘the right to a
private language’ uniting ‘the poetry, painting and music of the postwar years.’58 This
commitment to individual life is present in the work of both these writers, but Henri’s poems
can feel more nostalgic, recording visual images precisely because they are fleeting. Part
Four of City is a celebration of ‘private language’ in the form of listing, detailing the
contents of a room, beginning with what is ‘on the mantelpiece’:
1 travelling-clock at ten to twelve
1 Ever-Ready U14 gas lighter
half a packet of elastic bands
57
Frank O’Hara, The Collected Poems of Frank O’Hara, ed. by Donald Allen (Berkeley: University
of California Press, 1995), p. 325. Further references appear after quotations in the text as ‘OHCP’.
58
Geoff Ward, Language Poetry and the American Avant-Garde, (Keele: British Association for
American Studies, 1993), p. 12.
189
Pot of Nivea
Jar of Pond’s Cold Cream (‘The 7-day Beauty Plan 42 grams net’)
Max Factor Eye Makeup Removal Pads
1 packet Sungold ‘Colaire’
Pond’s ‘Fresh Start’ New Medicated Cleansing Gel
Body Mist Aerosol Perfume Spray
Body Mist Lemon Bouquet Spray
two not very sharp pairs of scissors
1 postcard of a flowerpiece by Bonnard
Coty ‘L’Aimant’ Hand Lotion
Coty ‘L’Aimant’ Skin Perfume
1 postcard ‘In the Forest’ by Douanier Rousseau
1 postcard of a Dubuffet mindscape
my keys to her flat
leather purse
Rentbook with 21 weeks paid
a fountain pen (black)
small Tupperware container with 7 shillings for the gasfire
tube of Anadin (7 left)
(C, 22-3)
The reason I have quoted this passage in full (one of eight similar lists, interspersed with
visual images and memories) is to show the meticulous detail which Henri uses. It is not just
‘Body Mist’, or even just a generic body spray, but two brand-specific ones. He also
includes precise marketing slogans – ‘Pond’s Cold Cream (“The 7-day Beauty Plan 42
grams net”)’ – or the precise wording of the packaging – ‘Pond’s “Fresh Start” New
Medicated Cleansing Gel’.59
The precision is important because it is a record of a specific time and place. Henri piles up
the stuff of the room but does not talk about the woman herself (the entire poem refers to
‘you’ without defining who that is). We know many peripheral details (what’s on her
draining board and what she’s been wearing) but no details of the woman herself. The
enumeration and accumulation of beauty products throughout the section quoted above and
the rest of Part Four is matched by listing items of clothes:
pink lacy knitted sweater
(pink nylon seethru bra
small soft breasts underneath)
blue skirt
black furry slippers
hair tied back
(C, 18)
59
There are a number of drafts of this section in the Archive. Comparing the earliest drafts to the
printed text shows just how similar they are, and Henri can also be seen to have added in specific or
additional information during the original draft. The first list for ‘on the mantelpiece’ (fig 5.13a) has
been copied out (fig 5.13b) with the exact same information, preserving the original recording
impetus. There are cuts from these drafts which do not appear in the printed text, but no amendments
to the individual lines – see, for example, the colours of Drummer Dye, where in the second draft
Henri has written ‘1 blue 1 navy’ and then crossed out ‘blue’ and written ‘turquoise’, which is the
colour which appears in the first instance.
190
These lists could be seen as a blazon, a poetic genre dedicated to the praise of the female by
the particularization of her attributes, arranging ‘individual features so as to guide the reader
through a particular way of seeing the beloved’.60 However here, instead of attributes, we get
things.
Lists are common in literature – from the catalogue of ships in Book II of Homer’s Iliad to
the list of ironic bequests in François Villon’s ‘The Legacy’, or the celebration of every
atom in Walt Whitman’s ‘Song of Myself’. Umberto Eco’s work on lists discusses forms of
cataloguing, accumulation, and enumeration, and celebrates the idea of being ‘seized by the
dizzying sound of the list’.61 In his work on lists, Robert E. Belknap is more concerned with
defining the different usages: ‘Lists enumerate, account, remind, memorialize, order.’62
Henri’s lists in City do all five: they enumerate the contents of the room, they account what
sorts of things belong to the woman, they remind Henri what she likes (or is like), they
memorialize his effect on those things, and they seek to order what is there (Henri controls
how we find them).
Part Four ends with what is ‘on the bed’:
1 almost new Dutch blanket
2 pillows
tangled sheets and blankets
2 people 1 male 1 female
(C, 27)
The full effect of these simple lines is only felt by their comparison to the accumulation of
minutely specific details in all the previous lists. In describing the details there is a sense of
ownership, but also of celebration. Heaping up images based on common cultural referents
helps to re-create his social space and the people that he loves and wants to memorialize.
Henri called it ‘primitive magic – to name something is to evoke its existence’ (TAN, 72). To
name the contents of this room is to evoke and preserve both its and the woman’s existence.
As noted earlier, Grevel Lindop says that in Henri’s use of advertising language ‘the
resemblance is really too close for parody’.63 However, Henri is not parodying the language
60
Robert E. Belknap, The List: The Uses and Pleasures of Cataloguing (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 2004), p. 24.
61
Umberto Eco, The Infinity of Lists, trans. by Alastair McEwen (London: Maclehose Press, 2012), p.
118.
62
Belknap, p. 6.
63
Grevel Lindop, ‘Poetry, Rhetoric and the Mass Audience: The Case of the Liverpool Poets’, in
British Poetry Since 1960: A Critical Survey, ed. by Grevel Lindop and Michael Schmidt (Oxford:
Carcanet, 1972), pp. 92-106, p. 100.
191
of advertising but rather claiming it as part of his visual cultural field. Kirk Varnedoe calls
popular urban culture ‘an alphabet for art’s new language’, with twentieth century art
categorised as ‘a permanent circuit between high art and the low culture of the modern
city’.64 If collage, papiers collés, and assemblage (in Pop Art and before) are characterized
by their use of fragments of everyday life, ready-made or existing imagery from mass
culture, poetry can do the same. Henri’s links to this ‘found image’ aesthetic go back to
Schwitters and earlier. Henri wrote in his ‘Notes on Painting and Poetry’ that as well as the
‘Long Live Socialism’ banner from The Entry of Christ into Brussels in 1889, there was
another ‘quote’ from an earlier drawing by Ensor: the Colman’s Mustard advert.65 This
advert is clear in the Entry, where Henri copies the company’s bright yellow tin and
packaging imagery. It also appears in the poem, highlighted by being in all capitals:
‘COLMAN’S MUSTARD’ (TMS3, 47). Henri calls the Colman’s advert in Ensor’s drawing
‘the first bit of pop art’ (TAN, 73): the advert is not included just as a modern advertising
slogan, it has a deeper meaning in its homage to Ensor. This is also evidence of Henri
recognising that Pop Art sensibilities existed before the Pop Art movement itself. Just as the
Merseybeat movement embraced Allen Ginsberg as legitimising what they were already
doing, so too does Henri embrace Pop Art because he is already within this tradition, already
taking visual quotations of the everyday. Marco Livingstone’s Pop Art: A Continuing
History defines Pop Art as ‘the emblematic presentation of ordinary objects’.66 This phrase
can also be used to define Henri’s own aesthetic: ordinary objects are claimed by Henri as
emblematic of his own life.
VISUAL POETRY
As suggested earlier, the printed page can also be a visual experience. Walter J. Ong argues
that: ‘Print situates words in space more relentlessly than writing ever did’,67 as the position
on the page is locked in. This positioning is an image, for Johanna Drucker, precisely
because ‘presence’ on the page ‘depends on visual means’, such as typography and white
64
Varnedoe, p. 15.
The drawing is Alive and Radiant: The Entry of Christ into Jerusalem, one of six black-and-white
religious drawings by Ensor of 1885-6, and which can be seen as a study for the Brussels painting.
Henri names the drawing as ‘“Hail, Jesus, King of the Jews” of 1885’ (TAN, 73), from the drawing’s
large banner ‘Salut Jesus Roi des Juifs’ (see fig 5.14). The references in ‘Entry’ to ‘HAIL JESUS,
KING OF THE JEWS’ and ‘BUTCHERS OF JERUSALEM’ also show Henri’s knowledge of this
drawing, as these are not in Ensor’s later painting.
66
Marco Livingstone, Pop Art: A Continuing History (London: Thames & Hudson, 2000), p. 11.
67
Walter J. Ong, Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word (London: Methuen, 1982), p.
121.
65
192
space, which ‘can’t be translated into any other form.’68 Charles Olson and Allen Ginsberg
have already been mentioned in terms of breath-measure, but the look of the work on the
page was also important to both.69
The layout of the poem on the page can give cues as to how it should be performed. Take,
for example, McGough’s ‘fade out’ technique. Chapter Three has already considered his
way of ‘runningallthewordstogether’ as being representative of his speech patterns, but it is
also relevant in terms of page space, demonstrating Olson’s idea of the page space as score:
‘If a contemporary poet leaves a space as long as the phrase before it, he means that space to
be held, by the breath, an equal length of time’.70 Whilst the Merseybeat poets do not use the
page space as a strict score in the way that Olson suggests, the visual appearance of the
poem on the page, nevertheless, usually relates to how the poem is to be read. For example,
in McGough’s ‘A lot of Water has Flown under your Bridge’, the page space is used
visually:
but time has passed since then
and a lotof water
has flown
under
your
bridge.
(TMS1, 62)
On the Penguin Audio Cassette, the ending is a clear diminuendo, just as the text’s short
lines fall away. The visual effect of the poem on the page is representative of both the water
flowing and of the poem gradually fading out. Patten’s ‘Schoolboy’ uses a number of
different line lengths and indentations to represent the different moments and speakers. He
also uses the ‘fade out’ technique:
The schoolyard’s full of people to hate.
Full of tick and prefects and a fat schoolmaster
and whistles and older and younger boys, but
he’s growing,
sadly
growing
up.
(TMS1, 115)
68
Johanna Drucker, ‘Visual Performance of the Poetic Text’, in Close Listening: Poetry and the
Performed Word, ed. by Charles Bernstein (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), pp. 131-161, p.
131.
69
Olson talks of open verse as being ‘COMPOSITION BY FIELD’ (Charles Olson, ‘Projective
Verse’, in Collected Prose, ed. by Donald Allen [Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997], pp.
239-49, p. 239). Ginsberg’s letters about the page layout of ‘Howl’ were also mentioned in Chapter
Two as a way in which the ‘long line’ is both a visual and an oral phenomenon.
70
Olson, p. 245
193
This is reproduced in The Liverpool Scene, too (TLS, 49). Coming after the longer lines, the
short lines emphasise the individual words, which has the effect of slowing the pace. This
use of page space is something which is also evident in Henri’s work, such as in ‘Me’, where
the poem ends:
Garcia Lorca
and
last of all
me.
(TMS1, 28)
What these three examples show is how the white space is used effectively to create or
reinforce meaning. The McGough poem flows like water, Patten’s indents emphasise each
word deliberately to give them extra force, and Henri’s final lines function as either a ‘fade
out’, making him less important, or as a emphasis, isolating ‘me’ on the page to make it
stand out. This is much more impressionistic than Olson’s strict space and pause
instructions, but the visual layout of the poem is still ‘a script to its vocalisation’.71
For some poems, the visual element is formed from their inception. Henri could not type,
and often left notes for the typist which show what he intended. Henri’s Archives give us
access to the process, demonstrating that the look of the printed work has been given
consideration. For example, a handwritten draft of ‘In the Midnight Hour’ has pencilled
slashes added to the original pen draft to indicate whether the typist should use a single or
double line space between the sections (/ or //), (Henri A I.1[11]). In the Bristol Penguin
Archive, there are also a number of examples from all three of the poets that are attentive to
the visual aspects of the page. Thus, as part of his suggestions for the second revised edition
of The Mersey Sound, McGough sent in a photocopied double page from After the
Merrymaking (1971) of ‘40-Love’.72 After the Merrymaking was the first instance of the
poem in print, and the poem uses the physical barrier of the gutter to represent the net by
printing the poem across two facing pages. However, McGough’s handwritten amendment
to this version, for inclusion in the next edition of The Mersey Sound, pushes the two
columns much further apart, so that the couple playing tennis have a much larger gap
between them, emphasising that ‘the/ net/ will/ still/ be/ be-/ tween them’ – see fig 5.15a. In
The Mersey Sound, the gutter is used again to divide the two sides of the match and the two
columns, but the columns are also right-aligned on the left-hand page and then left-aligned
on the right-hand page abutting the gutter – see fig 5.15b. The two columns are set wide
71
Olson, p. 245
The performance of this poem and its tennis match conceit has already been discussed in Chapter
Three, but it also works on the page, the columns of words acting as the bounce of the ball between
partners – breaking up the syllables of words such as ‘ten-nis’ and ‘be-tween’ reaffirms this.
72
194
apart so as to emphasise the space between the couple. This poem has had another visual
manifestation in Liverpool Doors, an exhibition at the Museum of Liverpool in 2012, which
‘explores the history and character of Liverpool through stories and memories symbolised
by doors from across the city.’73 ‘40-Love’ (fig 5.15c) appears across two doors, each being
printed with a column of the text and painted green to represent a grass tennis court. The
space between the two doors is representative of both the distance between the couple and
the net of the match. In this visual manifestation, the word ‘net’ is highlighted just as in the
vocalisations, by being the only word which is on the left-hand side of this door and also
printed in red (as opposed to white), appearing as if this is the ball bouncing from one side to
the other.
‘Adrian Henri’s Talking After Christmas Blues’ is another poem which has been discussed
previously in terms of performance, but which also has a strong visual element on the page.
This poem is particularly important because, from the very earliest drafts I have found, the
visual is bound up with the text itself. The poem is, as previously stated, in the ‘talking
blues’ mode. The layout of the poem uses indentations:
Well I woke up this mornin’ it was Christmas Day
And the birds were singing the night away
I saw my stocking lying on the chair
Looked right to be bottom but you weren’t there
there was
apples
oranges
chocolates
. . . . aftershave
– but no you.
(TMS1, 31)
Each verse takes the same basic form, with the list (including a pause represented by the
ellipsis, spaced out on the page before the fourth item), and then the problem of ‘but no you’
is reiterated:
there’ll be
Autumn
Summer
Spring
. . . . and Winter
– all of them without you.
(TMS1, 32)
What is striking is that the layout exists in exactly the same format in the early notebook
version of this poem – the indented layout is part of the poem from the first moment of
73
See http://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/mol/exhibitions/liverpool-doors/ [accessed 1 March
2013].
195
creation (see fig 5.16a and b for two manuscript examples where the look is integral). As
Johanna Drucker states, ‘visual and verbal codes are integrated in transmission on the
page’.74 Indentations and line breaks are important particularly for Henri as a way of spacing
the poem on the page to cue oral performance, pause, sense, and so on. White space and
typographical choices cannot be translated out of the visual realm, but a poem with visual
elements such as this can – and indeed is intended to – be also read out loud.
As well as the use of white space, the Merseybeat poets were also concerned with other
visuals. Within the English tradition, there are oft-cited visual poems such as George
Herbert’s ‘Easter Wings’ (1833) or the ‘mouse’s tale’ in the shape of his tail in Alice’s
Adventures in Wonderland (1865). European examples which are similarly well-known
include Guillaume Apollinaire’s calligrammes (such as ‘Il pleut’ [1916], where the lines of
the text run down the page like rain), and Stephane Mallarmé’s use of typography as a visual
score. These examples function both as poems and also as pictures – the reader ‘sees’ the
rain as well as reads the text.75 McGough’s ‘Pantomime Poem’ (which appears in only the
second edition of The Mersey Sound) uses the idea of the font size as a guide to volume, as
the font size of the repeated word ‘more’ gets larger and larger until finally it cannot even fit
on the page, representing the increasingly oppressive and gruesome cries of the children (see
fig 5.17).
Henri’s ‘Pictures From An Exhibition’ is another clearly visual poem, both in its printed
state and in the evidence of the process which can be seen from Archive material. The
pictures are from a specific exhibition, which is included as a subtitle to the poem in The
Mersey Sound: ‘Painting and Sculpture of a decade 54-64 Tate Gallery London April-June
1964’ (TMS1, 35).76 A notebook shows the notes he took, reproducing the catalogue
numbers for the paintings and sculptures as well as their titles (see fig 5.18, Henri C 1/6).
These – explicitly titled as pictures from an exhibition – are both descriptions of the
paintings and sculptures and short poems inspired by them, as these examples will
demonstrate. Take, for example, ‘No. 291 Robert Rauschenberg “Windward” 1963’:
74
Johanna Drucker, ‘Not Sound’, in The sound of poetry, the poetry of sound, ed. by Marjorie Perloff
and Craig Dworkin (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009), pp. 237-248, p. 238.
75
On the subject of typography in literature, see, for example, Margaret Church, ‘The First English
Pattern Poems’, in PMLA, 61.3 (1946), pp. 636-50, and the work of Johanna Drucker, such as The
Visible Word: Experimental Typography and Modern Art, 1909-1923 (Chicago: The University of
Chicago Press, 1994).
76
The title also evokes Modest Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition (1874), a piano suite inspired
by a retrospective of the artist Viktor Hartmann.
196
printed oranges are painted
painted oranges are painted
Angry skyline over the gasworks
A Hawk sits brooding inside a painted rainbow.
(TMS1, 35)
This poem highlights three aspects of Rauschenberg’s painting (fig 5.19). The first two lines
of Henri’s poem clearly refer to the advertisement for Sunkist Oranges at the top of the
painting, where one of the printed oranges has been painted over, and also to the section of
the painting immediately below this, where there are a number of painted oranges in white,
one of which has been painted over in orange. The lines of this poem could be described as
straight ekphrasis moments: to describe the skyline as ‘angry’ is apt, because of the yellow
and red Rauschenberg has added to this photo transfer, creating an effect of fire. Similarly,
there is indeed a bird is on the left hand side of the painting, with a roughly painted rainbow
as its background. However, there is more: the bird appears to be perched on top of the bluewashed photo transfer of apartment blocks, which we do not get from Henri’s poem, and
also, with its the white-painted head, might signify a bald eagle rather than a hawk,
particularly in light of the other ‘American’ iconography of the Statue of Liberty and
Californian oranges. Ekphrasis has been defined by James A. W. Hefferman as ‘the verbal
representation of visual representation’,77 and by Elizabeth Bergmann Loizeaux as ‘the poem
that addresses a work of art’.78 ‘Pictures…’ clearly represents visual objects verbally, and
addresses works of art, but the individual poems are not always direct and comprehensive in
their relation to the exhibits they are named after. The printed poems follow the initial
notebook response, and therefore, as a group, as a selection of pictures of an exhibition,
could be said to be more about Henri’s own response to, and interpretation of, the exhibition,
than the paintings or sculptures themselves.
‘Pictures…’ also recalls O’Hara’s poem ‘Why I Am Not A Painter’, a comparison between
the processes behind his own ‘Oranges: 12 pastorals’ and Mike Goldberg’s painting
Sardines. O’Hara watches Goldberg’s painting during the composition process, which
begins with the word ‘sardines’ painted on it, but, when he sees the finished painting in a
gallery:
All that’s left is just
letters. ‘It was too much,’ Mike says.
But me? One day I am thinking of
77
James A. W. Hefferman, Museum of Words: the poetics of ekphrasis from Homer to Ashbery
(Chicago: Univeristy of Chicago Press, 1993), p. 3.
78
Elizabeth Bergmann Loizeaux, Twentieth-Century Poetry and the Visual Arts (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2008), p. 1.
197
a color: orange. I write a line
about orange. Pretty soon it is a
whole page of words, not lines.
Then another page.
(OHCP, 262)
Both artist and poet go through a process of accumulation: O’Hara goes from ‘a line’ to a
‘whole page’, then ‘another page’, constantly adding to the original idea until ‘My poem/ Is
finished’ (OHCP, 262). The obvious difference is the experience of seeing the painting as
one whole plane, whereas in a poem, as O’Hara says, ‘There should be/ so much more’
(OHCP, 262).
‘Why I Am Not A Painter’ opens with the idea that: ‘I think I would rather be/ a painter, but
I am not’ (OHCP, 261). O’Hara was connected to the art world as a curator and an art critic,
but Henri was both a poet and a painter and as such can use either (or both) to explore an
idea. This is also evident in his attention to page space. The Archive holds a typewritten
copy of ‘Pictures…’ with handwritten notes specifically about the look of the words on the
page. Here three different stages of the text demonstrate how important precise visuals are.
The typewritten copy uses Henri’s notebook titles, setting them on the page so as to mark the
piece out as being inspired by the exhibition.79 ‘No. 10-13 Josef Albers Studies for “Homage
to the Square” 1961-2’, the text of which is simply the four titles of the four studies, is
recorded in the notebook on four consecutive lines, but Henri has also written a note, ‘space
out’ (see fig 5.18). On the typewritten copy, this instruction has been followed by the typist
leaving a gap between each. Henri has then requested ‘large space between each if possible’
in his notes on the typist’s copy, demonstrating that the ‘spacing out’ he requested originally
needs to be greater, perhaps representing the space between each of the original paintings on
the wall of the gallery (see fig 5.20). In The Mersey Sound, the space has been widened:
look.
see.
long ago.
now.
(TMS1, 36)
79
The catalogue numbers Henri records are all correct, save for ‘No. 73 Joseph Cornell “Hotel de
l’Etoile”’ which should be 72 (73 is Cornell’s Compartmented cubes [n.d.]) – see Alice and Peter
Smithson, eds., Painting & Sculpture of a Decade 54-64, Tate Gallery (London: The Calouste
Gulbenkian Foundation, 1964), p. 92.
198
Another of the responses, ‘No. 84 Mark Rothko “Reds – No 22” 1957’, uses typography to
visually represent the painting, from top to bottom on the page:
SCARLET
ORANGE
ORANGE
ORANGE
SCARLET
CRIMSON
SCARLET
(TMS1, 35)
The original notebook records the colours, which describe Rothko’s painting (fig 5.21), in
capitals, which have been crossed out by Henri and re-written in lower-case letters (see fig
5.18). In the typewritten copy, two words have the word ‘bold’ next to them (he also
indicates that the word ‘crimson’ should be indented a space more, see fig 5.20). In terms of
representing the painting, the two bold words – ‘orange’ and ‘crimson’ – are indeed the two
blocks which stand out for the viewer, drawing the eye first both in the poem and in the
painting.
Henri approaches concrete poetry in this poem. For Wendy Steiner, concrete poetry is ‘the
most literal realization of the painting-literature analogy that I know’, because it ‘overcomes
some of the barriers that stand between words and things’.80 In this case, Henri’s poem
recreates the scarlet frame, blending first into the edge of the orange, then the intensity of the
orange block itself, and then blends back into the background scarlet. His comments to his
typist on ‘Pictures…’ show how important it was to the experience of the poem for the
visual aspect to be right. The need for bold for certain colours, ‘large’ or ‘more’ space, or
italics to break up and set apart some sections from others, are clearly deemed essential to
the experience of the reader and increase the iconicity of the text, creating a sense that these
poems are closer to ‘text as image’, to be experienced on the page. Drucker states that
‘writing is not only an instance of language – it is also an image’,81 and the use of the visual
possibilities of type, as well as the instructions for these uses, demonstrate this. Henri wrote
to Anthony Richardson about his selection for the original The Mersey Sound to say he
wanted ‘Pictures…’ included because it is ‘interesting because different i.e. for printing
rather than reading.’82
The visual performance on the page can be representative of voice, a score, structurally
meaningful, or evidence of process. To return to Olson and ‘Projective Verse’, ‘every
80
Steiner, p. 198-9.
Drucker, Figuring the Word, p. 61.
82
Letter from Adrian Henri to Anthony Richardson, n.d. (Bristol Penguin Archive DM 1107 / D 103).
81
199
element in an open poem (the syllable, the line, as well as the image, the sound, the sense)
must be taken up as participants in the kinetic of the poem just as solidly as we are
accustomed to take what we call the objects of reality’.83 This is a call for totalisation,
encompassing text as words to be spoken and text as image to be seen, and is what these
examples of Merseybeat poetry have sought to demonstrate: a poem can, and indeed should,
be verbal, vocal, and visual.
VISUAL ART PRACTICE IN PERFORMANCE
As well as the performances discussed in Chapters Three and Four, there are other live
activities which have an inherently visual nature – such as those which have their roots in
Dada and Surrealist performance, including the Events which will be discussed in the next
section. McGough specifically mentioned Henri’s silent poems when I asked him about the
content of the Hope Hall evenings: ‘Adrian might bring along a silent poem – you know, just
stand there with a frame for five minutes.’84 The live events of the Cabaret Voltaire were one
of the main modes of dissemination for Dada. Writing in the first Dada publication (15th
June 1916), Hugo Ball uses the idea of ‘independence’ twice in relation to the Cabaret
Voltaire: first, in setting up the nightclub, he ‘was sure that there must be a few young
people in Switzerland who like me were interested not only in enjoying their independence
but also in giving proof of it’, and second, that the resultant Cabaret’s ‘sole purpose [was] to
draw attention’ to ‘the few independent spirits who live for other ideals’.85 This deliberate
stance, of wanting to be recognized as being different, was a significant move, both focusing
the energies of the artists and creating a space of their own that the audience knew was set
apart from the rest of the art world. Movements often begin in terms of negatives – ‘we are
not them’ – and this concept of independence can also be seen in the origins of the
Merseybeat movement: not London, not Establishment, not Beat… Whilst they are perhaps
not the most obvious precursor to what the Merseybeat poets were doing in Liverpool in the
1960s, Dada and Surrealism are nevertheless important in the background as one of the
influences upon which they draw – American and European, high and low, literary and nonliterary.
In Environments and Happenings Henri describes the Cabaret Voltaire as forcing artists to
‘evolve a new style of performance’ (including ‘poems without words’ or ‘silent poems’),
thus: ‘Walter Serner performed a “poem” which consisted of placing a bouquet at the feet of
83
Olson, p. 243.
Interview with McGough, November 2012.
85
Hugo Ball, cited in Richter, p. 13-4.
84
200
a dressmaker’s dummy.’86 Henri’s ‘Summer poems without words’ (‘To be distributed in
leaflet form to the audience: each poem should be tried within the next seven days’) are
reproduced in The Liverpool Scene, composed of instructions such as: ‘Travel on the
Woodside ferry with your eyes closed. Travel back with them open’ (TLS, 73). Henri created
many of these ‘poems without words’ as performance pieces, usually with one or two props.
Many are printed in Tonight at Noon (pp. 28-30), and the Archive also includes several lists
(although it is not certain whether these are running orders or simply lists recording them),
such as the two titled ‘Love Poem I’ and ‘Love Poem II’: involving holding up, first, a
bunch of artificial lilies, or second, either ‘navy blue schooldrawers’ or a slip.87
Henri was clearly influenced by Dada and Surrealism. He even performed the Dadaist
manifesto ‘Zang Zang Tuumb’ several times alongside Paul O’Keefe and Geoff Ward – for
example, at the Imperial War Museum in November 1991, as part of ‘Zang Zang Tuumb:
Futurist and Vorticist Poetry & Manifesti’, with Ward as Tristan Tzara, O’Keefe as
Wyndham Lewis, and Henri as Umberto Boccioni. O’Keefe and Henri were ‘struck by the
idea that Wyndham Lewis’s BLAST with its huge typography and so on was surely
something to read aloud, not just look at’ and of ‘going back to manifestos, to perform
them’:
We had quite different voices, with me, quite a soft and not so strong vocal range,
particularly at that time; Paul could bring the house down, shake it down, had this
actor’s voice, a natural actor; and Adrian was quite different again.88
The cabaret format (of having different acts one after another) suited the fragmented nature
of the Dada aesthetic. However, where Dada was deliberately provocative, Merseybeat’s
performance format is more about camaraderie, about allowing anyone to participate.
Indeed, Mike McCartney’s memories – which are, significantly, all about performance,
about live events – are of there being all kinds of performances and performers. ‘Satire’ was
‘very important’ for sketches, paintings were exhibited ‘hot off the easel’, and poems were
read out loud on the same bill as folk singers and musicians: they had an ‘intense following’,
the audiences ‘loved it’, the organisation and performance choices were ‘loose’, ‘just a
group of interesting people getting together’.89
86
Henri, Environments, p. 17.
See fig 5.22a for an example of a list, and fig 5.22b for a running order of ‘Poems without words
for Edinburgh’. The former lists props or aides memoire next to each – ‘11. Love Poem II (slip)’,
Henri A.I.3(6) – and the latter goes into more detail for each title, Henri A.I.3(16). The ‘Liverpool
Drinking Song’ asterisked in here is printed in Tonight at Noon as: ‘drinks glass of beer. Rapidly,
without stopping’ (TAN, 30). See also the instructions used by Fluxus – see Henri, Environments, pp.
159-61.
88
Interview with Geoff Ward, February 2013.
89
Interview with Mike McCartney, May 2013.
87
201
There are a number of different activities which can be seen as having their root in Dadaist
and Surrealist performances which Henri knew of.90 The Dadaists produced ‘the first
simultaneous poem’,91 performed at the Cabaret Voltaire on the 30th March 1916 by Tzara,
Richard Huelsenbeck, and Marcel Janco, ‘L’Amiral cherche une maison à louer’.92 Hans
Richter records Ball as saying that simultaneous poems demonstrate that noises ‘are
existentially more powerful than the human voice’,93 with three source poems combining to
make a nonsensical whole. Whilst not strictly a simultaneous poem, in that the different
voices use a question and answer format which makes sense (rather than the deliberate
acoustic onslaught of ‘L’Amiral’), the Merseybeat poets do perform as a group cutting
together different works (as well as those collaborative performance instances discussed in
the previous chapter). The ‘Gifted Wreckage’ cassette contains a ‘cut-up’ of a Scaffold
sketch, ‘Who Are You?’, with Henri’s poem ‘Me’:
McGough:
Patten:
McGough:
Patten:
Henri:
Are you a milkman out for the night?
Are you a bishop coming home tight?
Who are you?
Yeah, who are you?
Paul McCartney Gustav Mahler, Alfred Jarry John Coltrane...
(McGough/13/1/1/149)
By splicing these two together they create new meaning, ending with an ‘oh’ of recognition
from McGough and Patten at Henri’s final words, ‘and last of all me’. Another element of
Dada performance which clearly influences the Merseybeat poets is the idea of performance
as being an essentially visual medium. The ‘collision impact’, as Annabelle Melzer calls it,
was not only present in simultaneous poems because of the noise:
At the very least there were the facial expressions of the performers as they moved
mouths and focused eyes on their reading of the texts. Crimped eyes, gaping mouth
and focus askew were not the usual diet of a poetry-hungry public.94
The idea of the milieu and the unique event has already been considered in the previous
chapters, but what is clear here is that performing should be a total experience, with
costume, set, and action being just as important as the oral elements.
90
This is not to say that the European avant-garde or Henri’s Art School education was the only
source for such activities. John Gorman was organising events for the Merseyside Arts Festival
independent of Henri, and both music hall and variety have always been strong in Liverpool. As I
have argued, it is important to consider these as background sources of influence for this movement.
91
Annabelle Melzer, Dada and Surrealist Performance (Baltimore: The John Hopkins University
Press, 1994), p. 35.
92
See Melzer pp. 38-40 for both the text and an interpretation of ‘L’Amiral’. The printed text of
‘L’Amiral’ is set out like a score, with the page space as indicative for performance. Page space is
therefore not only visual but also functional, as in poems discussed elsewhere in this chapter.
93
Hugo Ball, cited in Richter, p. 30.
94
Melzer, p. 36, 38.
202
Chance was also an important element of both the Dada and Surrealist manifestoes. Chance,
for Richter, is represented by the story of Jean Arp becoming frustrated and tearing up a
drawing, seeing how the pieces fell, and accepting ‘this challenge from chance as a decision
of fate’, he ‘carefully pasted the scraps down in the pattern which chance had determined.’95
Chance was embraced by the Surrealists as a stimulus alongside collective action in games
such as cadaver exquis. These could be seen as the visual equivalent of the poetry made by
cutting up words to put together into random sentences. And if chance made them
ungrammatical it was, as Richter says, ‘exactly this that Tzara wanted’.96 This is how to
make a Dadaist poem, according to Tzara:
Take a newspaper
Take a pair of scissors
Choose an article as long as you are planning to make your poem
Cut out the article
Then cut out each of the words that make up this article and put them in a bag.
Shake it gently
Then take out the scraps one after the other in the order in which they left the bag
Copy consecutively. 97
There are two examples of Merseybeat poetry where links to this ‘paper-bag poetry’98 can be
seen. First, in ‘cut-up’ poems such as ‘On the Late Late Massachers Stillbirths and
Deformed Children a Smoother Lovelier Skin Job’, a ‘Cut-up of John Milton Sonnet XVIII
On the late Massacher in Piemont/TV Times/CND leaflet’, published in the first edition of
The Mersey Sound. The version printed in Sphinx magazine, dated ‘2.v.62’, has a slightly
different title (and some textual differences), but also prints the text as clearly formed from
three different source materials (whereas The Mersey Sound only uses some capitalisation to
typographically differentiate between the lines), which makes the Sphinx version much more
obvious, visually, as a (literal) cut-up (see fig 5.23). The Sphinx version also contains a note:
‘The written bits are not invented: the original cuttings had been lost + it was not possible to
find duplicates. Also only 1 CND leaflet was available + hence back + front had to be used’
(Patten/6/1/6). It is obvious where the different phrases have come from (the title shows
clearly the three different typefaces of the three sources), creating juxtapositions such as: ‘In
seven days I promise you the bombing of Guernica by Franco’s German bombers’, where
the opening phrase (‘In seven days I promise you’), a common marketing phrase for beauty
regimes, is juxtaposed with the text of the CND leaflet. Elsewhere, the source material is
95
Richter, p. 51.
Richter, p. 54.
97
Tristan Tzara, cited in Melzer, p. 70. Henri’s ‘cut-up’ poems may also be inspired by William
Burroughs.
98
Melzer, p. 67.
96
203
interrelated: when Milton’s poem refers to ‘The triple tyrant’ he means Pope Innocent III,99
but Henri’s cut-up places Milton’s label (including semi-colon) next to three contemporary
politicians taken from the CND leaflet so it seems that they are the referents – in The Mersey
Sound, this appears as the line: ‘The Triple Tyrant Macmillan Kennedy Watkinson’ (TMS1,
22), all in the same typeface, removing that visual contextualisation.
Another kind of ‘cut-up’ – which Henri called ‘audience poems’ – brings us closer to
performance. In these pieces, the individual words are not cut from articles but are
contributed by the audience: ‘We’d get everyone to write a word or sentence, collect them at
the interval, then read out the results later.’100 Several are preserved in the Archive: the two
envelopes labelled by Henri as ‘Audience Poem (Sampson & Barlow’s)’ could be the
earliest examples, one containing cut-up bits of paper (flyers, etc.) with one word written on
each in various hands, the other containing squares of paper with a mixture of single words,
phrases, and whole sentences.101 There is no way of knowing the exact composition of the
poems; the performance on the night was based entirely on chance.
These performance activities are all used by the Merseybeat poets to further their own
agenda of connection with the audience, contributing to the experience of the live event.
This chapter will now discuss Events as an important aspect of both Henri’s visual art
practice and the performative nature of the Merseybeat movement.
EVENTS AND HAPPENINGS
Henri’s initial knowledge of the New York scene’s Happenings came, specifically, from
‘Kaprow’s thing in N. Y. “Art News” on Happenings 1961’ (Henri C1/8). Allan Kaprow’s
article, ‘Happenings in the New York Scene’, is intended as an introduction: ‘If you haven’t
been to the Happenings, let me give you a kaleidoscope sampling of some of their great
moments.’102 Kaprow paints a picture of a fresh, vibrant new community and artform, and
the article tells the reader what the most important elements of a Happening are. Audience
interaction and participation are emphasised: ‘You come in as a spectator and maybe you
99
See the textual notes to Sonnet XVIII in John Milton, The Complete Shorter Poems, ed. by John
Carey (Harlow: Longman, 2007 rev. ed.), pp. 341-3.
100
Adrian Henri, cited in Phil Bowen, A Gallery To Play To: The Story of the Mersey Poets (Exeter:
Stride, 1999), p. 52.
101
Envelopes preserved are: Henri B/6 (1), unlabelled; Henri B/6 (2), ‘Audience Poem (Sampson &
Barlow’s)’; Henri B/6 (3), ‘Audience Poem Everyman 8-xi-66’; and Henri B/6 (4), ‘Audience Poem
(Sampson & Barlow’s)’.
102
Allan Kaprow, Essays on the Blurring of Art and Life, ed. by Jeff Kelley (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1993). Originally published as ‘Happenings in the New York Scene’ in Art News
60.3 (1961), pp. 36-9, 58-62, p. 15.
204
discover you’re caught in it after all’; the audience are ‘comingled in some way with the
event ... There is thus no separation of audience and play’.103 There is a clear visual element
to the experience, both in terms of the spectacle of live performance and also because ‘this
kind’ of Happening ‘grew out of the advanced American painting of the last decade, and
those of us involved were all painters’.104 In his 1966 Assemblage, Environments &
Happenings, Kaprow describes how Happenings evolved as a trajectory beginning with
assemblage, then Environments – ‘Assemblages may be handled or walked around, while
Environments must be walked into’105 – and finally these Environments incorporated
activities and people, creating Happenings, ‘a collage of events in certain spans of time and
in certain spaces’.106
Kaprow’s 1961 article says that ‘Happenings are events that, put simply, happen’, that ‘their
form is open-ended and fluid’,107 ‘a Happening has no plot’, and ‘is materialized in an
improvisatory fashion’.108 The statement clearly had an impact on Henri’s conceptualisation
of his Liverpool Events. Whilst chance is still an element in Henri’s Events, they are not
completely spontaneous, as he tells the reader in Environments and Happenings (1974):
My own ‘events’ were cued from tape or live sound. This is not to deny that chanceoperations played a part in the planning of a number of early happenings, especially
in details: a drive-in movie screen in the background, a couple of suspicious
policemen interrupting the show, a corner empty at rehearsal filled with people.109
The naming of his performances as ‘Events’ instead of ‘Happenings’ could therefore be seen
as a distancing from Kaprow’s specific brand.110 Michael Kirby’s writings on Happenings
seek to dispel the ‘prevalent mythology’ about Happenings: ‘It has been said that there is
little or no planning, control, or purpose. It has been said that there are no rehearsals. ... these
myths are widely known and believed. But they are entirely false.’111 Kirby’s writings can be
seen as an attempt to reformulate Kaprow’s own statements, such as those quoted above
from the 1961 article about spontaneity, which could be misconstrued – he stresses that the
103
Kaprow, ‘Happenings’, p. 17.
Kaprow, ‘Happenings’, p. 16.
105
Kaprow, Assemblage, p. 159.
106
Kaprow, Assemblage, p. 198.
107
Kaprow, ‘Happenings’, p. 16.
108
Kaprow, ‘Happenings’, p. 18.
109
Henri, Environments, p. 89.
110
In fact, the term ‘Happening’ itself comes from Allan Kaprow’s 1959 ‘18 Happenings in 6 Parts’,
and Kaprow later claimed that: ‘I had no intention of naming an art form and for a while tried,
unsuccessfully, to prevent its use’ (Kaprow, Assemblage, p. 184n).
111
Michael Kirby, Happenings: an illustrated anthology (London: Sidgwick and Jackson, 1965), p. 9.
104
205
action of Happenings is ‘often indeterminate but not improvised’,112 utilising chance but
always having some form of script.
This thesis’s main argument revolves around the public and performative aspects of poetry,
and Dick Higgins – whose term intermedia and its ‘conceptual fusion’113 has helped form
my own ideas about crossmedia for Merseybeat – refers to Happenings as an ‘intermedium,
an uncharted land that lies between collage, music and the theatre.’114 He also uses the term
‘receiver, as we might call the listener, viewer, or reader collectively’.115 This seems to me a
useful term to describe the audience of a performance instance, as there are a number of
different stimuli and both visual and aural elements at play, but it could also imply a oneway communication – that the audience is passive in receiving information – whereas a
crucial part of a Happening is the audience’s participation. Here I refer back to Chapter
Four, and its discussion of the Music Hall tradition. One major difference between the
traditional theatre and the Music Hall audience was the particular engagement with the
audience that Music Hall acts encouraged. This type of performance instance might also be
usefully referred to as a source for Merseybeat’s own Events. In fact, John Gorman’s
involvement in the Merseyside Arts Festival (a forerunner of the Scaffold’s sketch antics)
would point more to the Music Hall tradition than to Kaprow. Gorman was in the audience
at Yoko Ono’s performance at the Bluecoat Chambers in 1967, where Ono invited the
audience to wrap her in bandages. Gorman’s attitude to this kind of avant-garde performance
art is clear: ‘When she was covered, John Gorman of the Scaffold shouted out, “You’re
wanted on the phone.” Liverpool audiences see through avant-garde pretension.’116
Moreover, before the New York scene’s Happenings, the same ideas were being explored
elsewhere. John Cage’s 1952 ‘“mixed media” event’ at Black Mountain College, ‘Theatre
Piece No. 1’, was ‘possibly the very first anywhere’.117 Henri’s history of Happenings
acknowledges this (though not the Music Hall thread), referring to a ‘separate tradition’ with
Cage’s ‘music-pieces’ as an example of these ‘tightly programmed’ events.118 The term
‘event’ used here may also indicate Henri aligning himself more with the programmed than
the random, as he sees it. Richard Kostelanetz makes a distinction between ‘pure
112
Kirby, p. 19.
Dick Higgins, Horizons: The Poetics and Theory of the Intermedia (Carbondale: Southern Illinois
University Press, 1984), p. 15-6.
114
Higgins, p. 22.
115
Higgins, p. 5.
116
Spencer Leigh, with Pete Frame, Let’s Go Down the Cavern (London: Vermillion, 2007), p. 107.
117
Martin Duberman, Black Mountain: An exploration in community (London: Wildwood House,
1974), p. 358.
118
Henri, Environments, p. 156-7.
113
206
happenings’ and ‘staged happenings’ which is also useful. Pure Happenings are ‘meant to be
as formally disorganized and serendipitous as life itself’.119 Staged Happenings ‘occur within
a fixed space, usually on a theatrical stage’ but do, like pure Happenings, follow a script
‘sufficiently indeterminate to ensure that events can never be precisely duplicated’.120
Kostelanetz goes on to define a number of different forms of live event, but it is this
distinction which is most useful for my purposes. The Event that I will discuss in detail later
in this section, ‘Bomb Event’, is an example of a performance which is more rigidly
organised, a ‘staged happening’. Furthermore, as mentioned above, Kaprow was not the only
impetus for Happenings to be translated into the Liverpool scene of the 1960s. In
Environments and Happenings, Henri states that the ‘first happenings in England were done
by a group of artists and poets in Liverpool in 1962, as a result of my reading an article by
Allan Kaprow earlier that year.’121 The reference to ‘artists and poets’ is significant, as their
backgrounds affect what the ‘Event’ becomes. In ‘Bomb Event’, for example, many
musicians were involved. The places where the Events took place should also be considered
– when Jeff Nuttall refers to ‘Adrian Henri’s romantic collage-events in Liverpool’s Cavern
Club’122 it may be ‘Bomb Event’ which is on his mind.
Whilst Happenings ‘do not just happen’, there are two interlinked reasons why they are –
intentionally – impermanent. They are usually performed only once, i.e. are not repeated, but
also cannot be exactly repeated because of the inherent element of chance.123 Happenings are
scripted (and usually rehearsed), but the scripts are often comprised of brief instructions
which are open to interpretation by the enactor (and therefore cannot be repeated exactly) or
are open to chance due to, for example, environmental factors.124 One consequence of this
fleeting nature is the lack of concrete evidence for discussing a particular event. Martin
Duberman’s study Black Mountain: An exploration in community contains an analysis of
Cage’s ‘Theatre Piece No. 1’, demonstrating some of the issues surrounding writing about or
recording Happenings. He presents the reader with five different records, from performers
119
Richard Kostelanetz, On Innovative Performance(s) Three Decades of Recollections on Alternative
Theatre (Jefferson: McFarland & Company, 1994), p. 5-6. The lack of initial capitalisation on
‘happenings’ is here an indication that Kostelanetz is writing about general happenings rather than
Kaprow’s Happenings. I have chosen to always use a capital for the term in order to make it clear I
am discussing these particular kinds of events as opposed to other forms of performance.
120
Kostelanetz, p. 6.
121
Henri, Environments, p. 116.
122
Nuttall, p. 127.
123
Of course, there are records of Happenings in video and photographic form (see, for example, the
many photos in Kaprow’s Assemblage), and have been performed again (such as the 2006
performance of ‘18 Happenings in 6 Parts’ in Munich).
124
Here I am thinking particularly of Kaprow’s ‘18 Happenings in 6 Parts’ (the ‘parts’ of which can
be chosen and their order changed around), and ‘Fluids: A Happening’ (which relies on the
environment to determine how and when the blocks of ice will melt).
207
and audience members, ranging from a diary entry written on the evening itself to interviews
more than a decade later.125 Collating the evidence, Duberman is able to pin the events
down:
We now know there was a ladder – or at least a lectern – and if M. C. [Richards]
wasn’t on it (and she probably wasn’t, since she was riding a horse, or in a basket)
then Rauschenberg or Olson was. Except that Olson was also in the audience. But
possibly that was after he delivered his poem; or maybe he came down and sat in the
audience in order to deliver his poem, since that, as you’ll recall was broken into
parts and it may be that he himself delivered only one of those parts (that part was in
French, perhaps).126
Of course, it is impossible to rely on the memories of the audience members after the fact,
but there will also be inconsistencies (other than the comic discrepancies listed here) because
nobody views the event with the same eyes or from the same position. Happenings are a
kind of spectacle, and recognise that audiences do not always have the same view of an
event. This was exploited in Cage’s ‘Theatre Piece No. 1’ by having the seats arranged in
the centre of the room and the action taking place in more than one area, so even if the
memories had agreed that, say, Rauschenberg was on a ladder, they would each have had a
slightly different view of it. Therefore, my discussion of ‘Bomb Event’ must be read in light
of these comments on the transient nature of Happenings and the unreliability of memory as
an accurate record. This section will discuss this particular Event in order to consider
Henri’s own interpretation of ‘Happenings’, and also how performance art provided the
Merseybeat movement with another access point for audience engagement.
Henri’s Events usually revolved, as already suggested, around music. The Introduction has
already mentioned that the idea of pairing local rock or r’n’b music with live poetry was
reached, in part, as a reaction to the disjunction perceived in poetry-and-jazz. What the
Events added was attention to the physical environment. Nuttall’s description of Happenings
as ‘three-dimensional paintings’127 is apt: the addition of a physical space which the audience
inhabit added a spatial and temporal dimension to the visual. Indeed, Henri refers to
happenings as a ‘natural extension’128 of the assemblages he had been making. The live
readings might incorporate a backdrop or have paintings hung on the wall, but the allencompassing environment creates a visual experience which moves the work towards ‘total
art’. At the same time, the Events ‘quickly became a popular form of entertainment: a
mixture of poetry, rock’n’roll and assemblage’.129
125
See Duberman, pp. 350-8 on the event, and pp. 352-7 for the individual records.
Duberman, p. 357.
127
Nuttall, p. 127.
128
Henri, Environments, p. 116-7.
129
Henri, Environments, p. 117.
126
208
The first Event, ‘City’, was part of the 1962 Merseyside Arts Festival: ‘the Event featured
various poets, dancers, a backdrop which Adrian painted “live” during the proceedings, and
an aural background of taped jazz recordings’.130 These elements – visual, spatial, and aural
– recurred in future Events. In Environments and Happenings Henri specifically mentions
the shift from taped music to ‘live music by local “Merseybeat” groups, for instance the
Roadrunners and the Clayton Squares’.131 In both Mike Evans’s and Henri’s recollections,
the Events are seen as a step towards The Liverpool Scene, the early Events figured as a
starting point for the crucial creative period of the 1960s. McGough (interviewed four
decades after the Events themselves) remembers individual pieces from the early Events,
performed at the Cavern or Hope Hall, such as ‘Brian sitting somewhere tapping out this
performance – him typing a letter, a poem, alone. Often girls were involved, dancing.’132 At
one such Event ‘the television people came in and saw us’, resulting in a mock-Event
deliberately staged and filmed for a BBC programme:
They said, ‘We need to catch the essence of it, we’ve only got three minutes, so just
do elements’. It was for one of those six o’clock programmes, ‘What’s the latest?
What are the beatniks up to now in Liverpool? Let’s go north.’133
The Event was filmed in a studio in Manchester, a room set up with only a stepladder
(possibly a reference to Cage’s ‘Theatre Piece No. 1’):
So you’ve got me on a stepladder reading poems, and Karen Misonovic ... dancing
very sexily around. Mike Evans was playing sax and Adrian throwing paint
everywhere and that was it, they just filmed that.134
Obviously this recording was a set-up, but what McGough remembers of both this and the
actual Events – what he calls the ‘real thing’ – was that they were ‘just fun really’:
It would always end up as a party. There was always music, always a band involved
... it was always fun, everybody was involved. There was a bit of theatre type stuff
and painting, all these different things.135
What is practised in New York as an avant-garde art movement becomes here a ‘party’.
130
Mike Evans, Sleeve Notes, The Amazing Adventures Of… The Liverpool Scene, prod. by John
Peel, Sandy Robertson, and The Liverpool Scene (Esoteric, eclec22138, 2009).
131
Henri, Environments, p. 117.
132
Interview with Roger McGough, November 2012.
133
Interview with Roger McGough, November 2012.
134
Interview with Roger McGough, November 2012.
135
Interview with Roger McGough, November 2012.
209
‘Bomb Event’ takes a serious subject – nuclear warfare – and puts this same spin on it. It
was performed at the Cavern, on Monday 14th December 1964.136 Spencer Leigh includes the
Event in his history of the Cavern:
The Cavern was full and ... in darkness. There was an explosion, girls screamed
while the lights flickered, and the Clayton Squares broke into Ray Charles’s ‘Danger
Zone’. Welcome to Adrian Henri’s Bomb Event.137
The pieces which were included in the event vary from those which are specifically about
nuclear warfare – McGough reading ‘A little piece of heaven’, the Clayton Squares playing
Charles Mingus’s ‘Oh Lord Don’t Let Them Drop that Atomic Bomb on Me’ – and those
which are coloured by association – such as the contribution of the Excelles:
who sang ‘Don’t Say Goodnight and Mean Goodbye’, and then went straight into
‘Silent Night’. For four minutes they sang the standard Christmas carol. All the time
they were singing, the countdown of a four-minute warning was given over the
PA.138
At the end of the four-minute warning, the bomb dropped:
The lights went out and there was a tremendous explosion. Girls were screaming
again as a false ceiling, made of paper and powder, representing fall-out, collapsed.
After the bomb had supposedly been dropped, the event ended with two mutants,
dressed in black, wandering round the audience to the accompaniment of very eerie
music on the organ.139
The article in Mersey Beat magazine, from which this description comes, also includes a
photograph of the Event, of ‘Poet Adrian Henry [sic]’ being attacked by a monster (fig
5.24). In another account, by Mike Evans, Patten was wrapped in bandages: ‘He looked like
the Invisible Man and he was a post-Bomb zombie’.140 The Mersey Beat article refers to
Henri ‘taking the mickey out of an actual Civil Defence pamphlet’, and affects an air of
amusement over the whole set-up. A major part of the event was Henri’s lecture on Civil
Defence. The Archive holdings for ‘Bomb Event’ include a copy of Civil Defence Handbook
No. 10 ‘Advising the Householder on Protection against Nuclear Attack’, with Henri’s notes
136
I have chosen to discuss this Event because evidence does exist of what occurred, and also because
of the ‘Bomb Commercials’ which came from it and were printed in a number of collections after the
Event itself had passed. For other Events, see http://www.adrianhenri.com/artist-happenings-list.html,
and http://www.adrianhenri.com/artist-happenings-gallery.html (the latter shows nine examples from
1962-79, with posters, photos, and information, including the 1979 ‘Funeral of Adrian Henri’ with
Rob Con and Lol Coxhill) [accessed 8 May 2013]. ‘The Black and White Show’ is recorded in Leigh
(2008), p. 143, and ‘Nightblues’ appears in Willett, p. 183-4. See also Sue Whatmough, No Copy of
the Script (Milton Keynes: AuthorHouse, 2010), p. 77, for a description of an Event organised by
Henri in Southampton.
137
Spencer Leigh, The Cavern: The Most Famous Club In The World (London: SAF, 2008), p. 141.
138
‘The Night The Bomb Dropped’, Mersey Beat, 19 December 1964, p. 10.
139
‘The Night The Bomb Dropped’, p. 10.
140
Mike Evans, cited in Leigh, The Cavern, p. 141.
210
for which parts to read out (the running order lists ‘CD Lecture’ parts I and II, Henri/8/2/80).
The notes completely reorder the original pamphlet in order to highlight the contradictions
and potential problems with the advice, such as the section which the reporter from Mersey
Beat records: ‘Whitewash your windows and ram the dressing table up against the door. All
in four minutes...’.141 In fact, he played around with the pamphlet so much that his
performance of this lecture had to be aided by pasting parts of the pamphlet onto other
sheets of paper (fig 5.25). This example, which tells us to: ‘Prepare your fall-out room for a
stay of at least a week, but remember to leave enough space to move about in’, is
immediately followed, in Henri’s lecture, by the long list of ‘basic furniture and equipment’
they recommend, along with the first aid supplies (which on this sheet is handwritten, copied
from the back page of the pamphlet). The items on the list include sensible basics but also
such instructions as ‘bowls, various, three’ and ‘teaspoons’.
The Mersey Beat article also mentions ‘a natural break ... and I mean a natural break, with
Bob Wooler and Ray McFall satirising TV commercials such as PAD – Prolongs Active
Death!’142 These commercials are Henri’s ‘Bomb Commercials’, five different pieces
satirising contemporary advertisements. The political force of the Event is obvious, and this
poem continues this political campaign after that performance, as it is included in both
Tonight at Noon and the last three editions of The Mersey Sound, as well as being performed
by Henri many times after ‘Bomb Event’. At the Final Academy reading with William
Burroughs – two decades after the original Event – Henri read ‘Bomb Commercials’ with
this introduction: ‘This is another golden oldie, you’ll forgive me for doing this… I always
think that when the situation that caused me to write this is over, I’ll stop reading it. This is a
set of television commercials for the next Great War’.143 This performance instance is a solo
reading, with Henri putting on a number of different voices to indicate the different
characters. In print, the lines are attributed to speakers ‘A’ and ‘B’. For solo readings Henri
differentiates between both separate commercials and the characters within them by
adopting different accents and voices. For example, he always puts on a high-pitched,
working class accent in order to represent the female character speaking in number three:
... so then I said ‘well let’s all go for a picnic and we went and it was all right except
for a bit of sand in the butties and then of course the wasps and Michael fell in the
river but what I say is you can’t have everything perfect can you so just then there
was a big bang and the whole place caught fire ...
(TMS2, 36)
141
‘The Night The Bomb Dropped’, p. 10.
‘The Night The Bomb Dropped’, p.10.
143
Recording of the Final Academy event, 5 October 1982, Centre Hotel, Liverpool [accessed via the
British Library Listening Service, T7411, T7413].
142
211
The absurdity of the commercials is clear – ‘sand in the butties’ is just as annoying as
nuclear war – and even Henri himself breaks off to laugh here:
... I don’t know what happened to my Hubby and its perhaps as well as there were
only four pieces of Kit-Kat so we had one each and then we had to walk home ’cos
there weren’t any buses ...
(TMS2, 36)
This stream of dialogue – which is delivered in all recorded versions as if all the events were
of no great consequence (and with attendant audience laughter) – is followed by a ‘voiceover’ announcing ‘HAVE A BREAK – HAVE A KIT-KAT’ (TMS2, 36).
The commercials are comic for their absurd imaginings of what life would be like after the
Bomb: it would be unlikely that we would survive the Bomb and the Fall-out by following
the Civil Defence pamphlet’s instructions, and, if we did, that the advertising agencies
would be in a position to carry on as normal. That one could ‘Get the taste of the Bomb out
of your mouth with OVAL FRUITS’ (TMS2, 36) is a fantastic image, but one must remember
that along with the threat of the Bomb which was present at this time, the strategies and
formats of commercials would have also been noteworthy: ‘We’re so used to it now, but at
the time it was new ... so that got incorporated into these Events as well.’144 Gorman,
interviewed by Leigh, also comments on the use of television commercials, recording them
and playing only the sound to audiences:
They just sounded so stupid so people would be laughing. We played them all the
way through, and then we played them again 20 minutes later and some people
laughed. Then we did it again and nobody laughed.145
When asked why they had been repeated, Gorman said it was precisely because ‘that’s what
happens on television.’146
The first printed instance of the ‘Bomb Event’ poems, in Tonight at Noon, keeps the
connection to the Event, being titled ‘Commercials for “Bomb Event”’, but Henri submitted
a photocopy of this page to Anthony Richardson when choosing poems for the revised
edition of The Mersey Sound, renaming them ‘Bomb Commercials’ (fig 5.26), removing that
link. However, the poems are still very much meant to be performed. At the Poetry
International performance in 1984, Henri introduces the poems as being inspired by ‘this
very good, very useful leaflet called “Protecting the household from nuclear attack”’, linking
144
Interview with Roger McGough, November 2012.
John Gorman, cited in Leigh, The Cavern, p. 141.
146
John Gorman, cited in Leigh, The Cavern, p. 141.
145
212
these poems to the original Event’s ‘CD Lecture’.147 In this instance, Henri is joined by
McGough and Patten which adds an extra dimension to the performance: for example, it is
Henri who tells the audience of ‘General Howard J. Sherman’, who has a ‘BIG job with BIG
responsibilities’, the man who presses the button, deciding between life and death, but the
full effect is felt only when McGough immediately delivers this advertisement’s punchline:
‘But he can’t tell Stork from butter’ (TMS2, 36). This performance also includes an extra
advert, which is not in any printed version, for ‘apocolipstick’, a new ‘holocosmetic’,
because, after all, as McGough’s advertisement voice-over tells us: ‘when he takes you in
his arms for that final, four-minute kiss, you need an extra special lipstick’.148 There also
exists a copy marked up for performance where four different performers are named, despite
the fact that the typed copy is subtitled ‘for two voices’ – this would suggest that when these
extra performers are available, they are used in order to make the commercials more
realistic, in the sense that they are more representative of the many different voices one hears
on actual television and radio commercials (see fig 5.27). And, similarly, the 1984 Liverpool
Poets show in Basildon (which has already been mentioned in Chapter Four) also includes
‘Bomb Commercials’ with sound effects in order to heighten their status as commercials. 149
The poems are inspired by, and reference, common marketing slogans of the period. Adverts
mask the reality of the threat of nuclear destruction, as if life would go on the same post-fallout, and the irony comes from the fact that both the audience and the performers know this
not to be the case.
Henri’s Environments and Happenings – described by Lucie-Smith as an ‘authoritative
book’150 – gives us an insight into his own attitudes to the movement and its antecedents.
The Cabaret Voltaire required a ‘new style of performance’ with the kinds of activities
mentioned in the previous section, which are specifically described by Henri as ‘communal
activities’.151 The Surrealists are, for him, ‘perhaps the most obvious forerunners of many of
the most recent kinds of art-activities’, because ‘the street was the focus of many of their
activities’.152 Henri tells the reader that his reason for including ‘this very selective history of
the modern movement’ is because:
147
Various Artists, Poets Punks Beatniks and CounterCulture Heroes, prod. by Chris Hewitt (Ozit
Morpheus Records, OZITDVD11, 2010).
148
Poets Punks Beatniks DVD.
149
The Archive also holds a marked up copy which includes the notes ‘commercial TV sting’ at the
beginning and end of the poems, (Patten/5/4).
150
Lucie-Smith, Art Today, p. 400.
151
Henri, Environments, p. 17.
152
Henri, Environments, p. 22.
213
I feel that the works that make up the rest of this book stem from a tradition of ‘total
art’. That this tradition is seldom made clear in histories of modern art makes this
recapitulation all the more necessary.153
This is therefore the attitude with which he approaches his own ‘total art’ manifestations.
This thesis has discussed a number of performance instances, and ways in which the
Merseybeat movement used the live event, but what this publication makes clear is how
much Henri valued ‘total art’ and also his interpretation of it. It is ‘the street’ where the
Surrealists activities take place, and the Cabaret Voltaire is likewise about ‘communal
activities’. Henri’s Events are similarly intentionally public and participatory. Kaprow’s
influence is clear as a catalyst, but there are also other considerations. The activities and
Events at Hope Hall were ‘another world’ to Mike McCartney: it was a space were ‘all
things were possible’, but he also remembers there being some distinction between their
activities there and that of the rock’n’roll groups, and says, of the decision to stage ‘Bomb
Event’ at the Cavern that ‘they weren’t expecting it... but we got away with it’.154 Evans also
remembers this Event as ‘more “stagey” than previous ones, with less overall audience
participation – until the end when the false ceiling collapsed!’155 This Event is not a ‘pure
Happening’, but then very few of Henri’s Events were. The very fact that so much evidence
remains for it is indicative of its special status, blurring the lines between a Happening and a
traditional theatre piece. Henri’s Events are an evolution of, and a companion thread to, the
live readings which are the main thrust of the Merseybeat movement. I have previously used
the term ‘poetry plus’ to describe the nights at O’Connor’s, and I see the Events as being just
another performance instance in which ideas can be explored and, more importantly, the
audience can be engaged.
CONCLUSION
Speaking of his poetry, Henri said that he uses ‘words which carry with them associations
with other contexts, to evoke overtones from other people’s work.’ 156 This is equally true of
his visual art. Collage work draws attention to the individual elements which have gone into
the creation of the whole, and Henri’s practice often revolves round this: there is the creation
of a community, drawing in a diverse range of heroes and friends; there are the references to
the urban environment and its advertisements and objects; and there are the various
influences, inspirations, and sources upon which he draws – Futurist performances inspire
Dada, Dada and Surrealism inspire Happenings, Cubism and Schwitters inspire both
153
Henri, Environments, p. 26.
Interview with Mike McCartney, May 2013.
155
Interview with Mike Evans, June 2013.
156
Adrian Henri, cited in Davies, Conversations, p. 5.
154
214
Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art, and, alongside these avant-garde practices there is
Music Hall, Variety, and the modern urban everyday. Henri’s painter’s aesthetic is,
therefore, made up of a combination of different visual art practices, which have also
affected the other spheres of art in which he is active.
Paul Wood’s introduction to The Challenge of the Avant-Garde specifically lists both
positive and negative connotations for the term ‘avant-garde’ as ‘a kind of evaluation is
implicit’: it is ‘forging ahead, breaking down barriers’ but is also associated with ‘difficulty
and incomprehensibility’.157 The Merseybeat movement takes those avant-garde influences
and re-frames them within the British populist tradition, mediating the audience’s exposure
to these potentially ‘difficult’ ideas – it is hard to imagine Allan Kaprow giggling behind the
curtain as Mike McCartney told me he did at one Event, enjoying the audience’s perplexity
at what this Event entailed.158 This irreverence is important. The referents of all three of the
Merseybeat poets are plural and inclusive. The poetry is clearly connected, as the previous
chapters of this thesis have shown, to Liverpool and the spaces in which they lived, but the
visual element of this movement is present in more than just the awareness of their physical
environment. There is also an awareness of how the poetry can be presented visually, both
on and off the page, in order to create an engaging experience for the audience. Visual
elements and page space can carry meaning and value additional to the experience of the
words as verbal entities – this is work which is not just available in performance, but also to
be read after, instead, or as well as, the fact. One of the elements at work in the performance
of poetry is clearly the audience’s visual experience, and this chapter has sought to expand
on Chapter Four’s discussion of the break away from traditional readings in order to
demonstrate this movement’s concerns with the live event. A performance of a text can exist
both out loud and on the page, and the Merseybeat movement uses both page space and
literal space in order to engage their audience and create a totalising experience – poetry as
‘total art’.
157
Paul Wood, ed., The Challenge of the Avant-Garde (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999), p.
7.
158
Interview with Mike McCartney, May 2013. McCartney claimed that the organisers of the Event
left the audience in a darkened room whilst they ‘went to the bar for a pint – they were still there
waiting when we got back’.
215
CONCLUSION
1967 was, as Adrian Henri says, ‘the year that changed my life’,1 with various publications,
the attendant media attention, and exposure to a wider national audience. Yet, significantly,
he continues: ‘it wasn’t the beginning, but a culmination of something for my generation in
Liverpool.’2 As I have argued throughout this thesis, the movement was a site-specific
confluence of the alternative avant-garde and the British populist tradition of art, and the
important events (Events) and moments I have discussed were almost all contained within
this decade in this city, or found their first explorations and expressions here.
I have alluded to the ‘Beatlemania’ of the late 1960s, and certainly the Mersey Beat music
scene attracted much media attention from outside, but the Merseybeat poetry scene, active
from the beginning of the decade, thrived on its local – loco-specific – expression. As
Edward Lucie-Smith wrote in his introduction to The Liverpool Scene: ‘the poetry now
being written in Liverpool differs from other contemporary English verse because it has
made its impact by being spoken and listened to, rather than by being read’.3 Lucie-Smith
makes much of the ‘enthusiastic local audience’,4 who accept both poetry and beat music:
‘no distinction is made between the two forms. Indeed, the audience is hardly conscious that
there is a distinction: the poetry and the music are judged by precisely the same criteria.’5
In his Art in a City report, published in 1967, John Willett stated that Liverpool ‘not only
contains perhaps the best municipal art gallery in England but has long harboured an active
body of professional artists’.6 As Chapter One of this thesis showed, the life of the city is
bound up with the port. Many of Liverpool’s music scenes come from immigrants creating
social spaces for themselves – and the atmosphere in the 1960s can be seen as a continuation
of this spirit. At the same time, ‘what was special’ about the 1960s, for Henri, was ‘the
feeling that anything was possible’,7 a feeling created for this generation, in part, because of
the changes in British culture after the Second World War, and a growing freedom which the
counter-culture (represented by, for example, the Beats in America, or Michael Horovitz’s
Children of Albion in Britain) seized as an opportunity – although this idea is also gently
mocked by Roger McGough in his poem ‘Decade’, published in his autobiography:
1
Archive clipping, Henri/1/4/12/33, Adrian Henri, ‘Our flowers died’, n.d.
Archive clipping, Henri/1/4/12/33, Adrian Henri, ‘Our flowers died’, n.d.
3
Edward Lucie-Smith, in TLS, p. 3.
4
Edward Lucie-Smith, in TLS, p. 5.
5
Edward Lucie-Smith, in TLS, p. 7.
6
John Willett, Art in a City (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2007), p. 2.
7
Archive clipping, Henri/1/4/12/33, Adrian Henri, ‘Our flowers died’, n.d.
2
216
We never wore kaftans or put flowers in our hair
Never made the hippy trail to San Francisco
Our Love-Ins were a blushing, tame affair
Friday evenings at the local church-hall disco
Heard it on the grapevine about Carnaby Street
Looked for Lucy in the sky, danced to the Mersey Beat
There were protests on the street and footprints on the moon
Times they were a changin’, but the changin’ came too soon
Those were the days my friend, there was something in the air
Though we never wore kaftans or put flowers in our hair. 8
So why did this movement emerge in Liverpool, and why then? In the same article in which
he claimed that 1967 changed his life, Henri also answered this question:
How did it all happen? Liverpool was, and is, a place where everyone knows
everyone, goes to the same pubs, clubs, cafés. It came as naturally to put words to
music by the bands we listened to, as for a painter like me not only to write poems
but stand up and read them in bars to an audience of fellow Scousers. 9
This article encapsulates much of what this thesis has aimed to demonstrate. The traditional
boundaries between artforms and cultural hierarchies are not upheld by these poets. Instead,
we have instances of poetry parodying the actions of TV characters, references to all kinds
of music in poems which then become songs themselves, and avant-garde art movements
repackaged and utilised for their entertainment value. These poets are clearly informed by a
wide range of registers and planes of culture and the variety of media through which these
are disseminated. The Merseybeat poets take their inspiration from diverse sources and represent it to their audiences, crossing media, styles, and artforms in order to both entertain
and engage.
In Environments & Happenings, Henri refers to both performance art and ‘the new poetry
movement’ as coming ‘from a provincial rather than a London context’,10 and telling his
readers that ‘both “Pop” poetry and “concrete” poetry in England are almost exclusively
non-metropolitan in origin’.11 Lucie-Smith also noted this in The Liverpool Scene:
The relationship between metropolitan and provincial culture is, in fact, one of the
basic themes of this book. Poets in Liverpool, like provincial writers and artists
everywhere in England, seem to hover between two contradictory sets of attitudes.
London inspires fear and resentment – a fear of being brushed aside, a resentment of
slights either real or imagined. It also arouses mockery for its inhibitions and its
8
Roger McGough, Said and Done: the autobiography (London: Random House, 2005), p. 191-2.
Archive clipping, Henri/1/4/12/33, Adrian Henri, ‘Our flowers died’, n.d.
10
Adrian Henri, Environments and Happenings (London: Thames and Hudson, 1974), p. 111.
11
Henri, Environments, p. 112.
9
217
pretentiousness. Liverpool poets feel a real sympathy for their environment, but an
even greater loyalty. 12
When interviewed for The Liverpool Scene, the poets reveal a pride in being from Liverpool,
but it is not so much specific to Liverpool as specific to their lives, their own experiences,
and a specific version of Liverpool city life – summed up in the shorthand of ‘Liverpool 8’.
For example, McGough articulates both the loyalty to which Lucie-Smith refers, but also the
poets’ involvement in ordinary urban life:
In Liverpool you’re a poet one minute, but the next minute you’re talking about
football, or you’re buying bus tickets, or someone’s kicking your head in down at
The Blue Angel. It’s all part of living. If you have an experience you go home and
write the poem about that experience, then you go out and get drunk, or you meet
friends and things. 13
In Contemporary British poetry and the city, Peter Barry notes that poetry about cities, and
particularly inner cities, tends towards the negative, mirroring recent trends of urban decay
and images of inner-city deprivation.14 Yet even faced with slum clearance, riots, and the
general decline in the period after the Second World War, poetry about Liverpool by these
poets – and especially by Henri, who lived there all his adult life – is generally positive.
And the poetry is not only focused on the urban, but the urban everyday, on people and
experiences, both personal and public. Indeed, Arthur Adlen (a near contemporary of the
Merseybeat poets, already cited in the Introduction and Chapter One of this thesis) told me
that the poets which they read at school, such as Dylan Thomas or Wilfred Owen, ‘were
great poetry but not part of my own life experience’, and that ‘having our own poets
encouraged us’.15 For him, in the 1960s, in pubs and clubs, with Henri, McGough, Brian
Patten and the rest of the scene:
poetry was about real life. Poetry in Liverpool to me was about real life but
expressed beautifully. There was no problem saying you were going to poetry
nights, it was all mixed up – you’d be at a poetry night on a Wednesday and at the
football on Saturday. 16
By focusing on the work of these poets specifically in Liverpool, in the 1960s, this thesis has
shown that the Merseybeat movement was born out of and relied upon a culture of live
readings as entertainment, where the dissemination of the work depended on public and
multiple showings. As a result, the ‘pop poetry’ label is reinterpreted and reclaimed: first,
because the movement is bound up in a crossmedial context, reliant on more than the words
12
Edward Lucie-Smith, in TLS, p. 6.
Roger McGough, cited in TLS, p. 14.
14
See Peter Barry, Contemporary British Poetry and the City (Manchester: Manchester University
Press, 2000), pp. 8-11, and Chapter Two, ‘The roads to hell’, pp. 23-44.
15
Interview with Arthur Adlen, March 2013.
16
Interview with Arthur Adlen, March 2013.
13
218
on the page, and therefore cannot be evaluated on only the print output; and second, because
to be ‘populist’ or ‘popular’ is, for these poets, to be successful, indicating that their
communication mode (common cultural referencing, direct contact with the audience) has
reached the people that it was intended for.
The culture of democratic literature and live events which these poets promoted has
continued – the Blackie (the Great George’s Project) and the Windows Project are just two
examples of movements inspired by what was happening in the 1960s, not to mention the
1980s identification with ‘Toxteth’ by black writers such as Levi Tafari.17 And, of course,
Henri, McGough, and Patten continued their work – as Barry concludes in his discussion of
poetry in Liverpool, the three poets are ‘major writers and performers still, and their work
has, of course, not remained fossilised in the long-ago moment of 1965 when Liverpool was
the centre of the human consciousness’.18 All three went on to write poetry for both adults
and children, plays, and other literary works. Whilst these three poets went their separate
ways after the end of the decade, they would also continue to work together in other ways as
well as uniting for tours such as Words on the Run, Liverpool Poets, and the 30th anniversary
tour.
In his autobiography, McGough states that ‘neither Brian, Adrian, nor I liked the original
Penguin Mersey Sound cover’, because the ‘black-and-white photographs of a teenage girl
screaming orgasmically and Yellow Submarine-type typography’ was ‘too close to the pop
music scene’.19 This justification of the rejection of the ‘pop’ look is legitimate – the
typography and image clearly aimed to evoke the Beatles – but the Penguin Art Department
were looking for a national angle, and it was in part because of ‘Beatlemania’ that attention
had focused on Liverpool in the first place.20 Each of the subsequent three editions of The
Mersey Sound retain some link to either the ‘Mersey’ or ‘Sound’ aspects – the second is a
close-up of a guitar, the third uses a photograph of the three poets next to the Mersey, and
the fourth uses an illustration of, one assumes, a Mersey ferry. It is interesting that the first
two are linked to the contemporaneous ‘Sound’, whereas the latter two rebrand the book
17
See, for example, Dave Ward, ‘The Windows Project’, in Gladsongs and Gatherings: poetry and
its social context in Liverpool since the 1960s, ed. by Stephen Wade (Liverpool: Liverpool University
Press, 2001), pp. 150-4. See also David Bateman, ‘Open Floor! Live Poetry Nights in Liverpool,
1967-2001’, in Wade, Gladsongs, pp. 111-137. The timing of this article is significant, choosing 1967
as the cut-off point for discussing ‘post-Merseybeat’ events, showing again that the focus must be not
only on this decade but also the early part (before national acclaim, before Patten moved away, when
they were all three present and performing regularly to local audiences).
18
Barry, p. 163.
19
McGough, Said, p. 222.
20
This is also true of the Beatles dedication of The Liverpool Scene, considered at the end of Chapter
Two.
219
with a focus on the ‘Mersey’. Whilst this thesis has referred to these three poets as
constituting a movement, I would argue that this makes sense only in the context of live
performance and collaboration in the 1960s in Liverpool. It is the attempt to keep the
‘Liverpool Poets’ label post-Liverpool, post-1960s, that McGough and Patten react against.
In an interview with me in 2012, McGough said that the publications and national attention
happened ‘after it had all been happening – 1967 was the end’,21 echoing the words of Henri
cited above. A review from the early 1970s entitled ‘The Mersey Echo’ refers to ‘a new
generation of poets and readers, who, having climbed over the bodies of Ubu, Batman and
the American Beats, realised that they were being spoken to in a dialect that was their own,
and on subjects that involved them.’22 It is ‘being spoken to’ which is important here, both in
terms of the audience connection which these poets sought but also in relation to my
emphasis on live events in the 1960s: ‘If you want to communicate with twenty people, go
ahead and do it that way. I want to communicate with two million.’23
In the Introduction, I stated that this thesis was an attempt to achieve a ‘thick description’ of
the Merseybeat movement as both a literary and cultural phenomenon.24 Clifford Geertz
states that what most prevents us ‘grasping what people are up to’ is not ignorance, but
rather ‘a lack of familiarity with the imaginative universe within which their acts are
signs.’25 Therefore, this project has undertaken much archival research and interviews with
those involved in the movement in order to recreate the imaginative universe of ‘Liverpool
8’ in the 1960s. ‘The Entry of Christ into Liverpool’ can be used as an exemplar, as it
encapsulates the main themes this thesis has sought to bring to light. First, because of its
connection to multiple planes (both common cultural referencing and the appropriation and
accumulation of other people and works into one’s aesthetic); second, because it is an
example of the ‘total art’ and crossmedial elements of the movement (being a poem, a
posterpoem, a performance piece, and a painting); and third for its focus on loco-specificity
(both in the content of the poem and painting and the context of readings and performances).
As well as the music, visual art, performance, and audience interaction which make up this
movement, the poetry does not rely on reading out loud something which is fixed in print,
but rather involves reassessing the text to create a new interpretative site in direct relation to
21
Interview with Roger McGough, November 2012.
Archive clipping, Henri K/7, Hayden Murphy, ‘The Mersey Echo’, Hibernia, 17 December 1971.
23
Mike Davies, Conversations (Birmingham: Flat Earth Press, 1975), p. 6-7.
24
‘The aim is to draw large conclusions from small, but very densely textured facts; to support broad
assertions about the role of culture in the construction of collective life by engaging them exactly with
complex specifics.’ Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays, 2nd. edn. (New
York: Basic Books, 2000), p. 28.
25
Geertz, p. 13.
22
220
the atmosphere of a particular event. What this means for the Merseybeat movement is that
the place and space of reading are of equal importance to the text itself: loco-specifics can be
used to ground a poem in a particular time and place, but also the reading of the poem brings
it in dialogue with a particular place and atmosphere. The reception of the live event is also
significant: ‘It’s not surprising that people would say “I was there” in the way that they
would about a gig. It’s not so much about the performance itself, as about the reception.
People remember that energy.’26 Charles Bernstein refers to the printed page as ‘textual
performances’,27 recognizing that it is possible to have multiple versions of a printed poem.
To interpret a work in Merseybeat poetry we can look at a network of instances – including
print, oral, and performance expressions – which together create the poem. It is the content
in conjunction with the context which makes each reading specific and special, and no one
artistic expression could be said to be the primary mode, as each new site presents the reader
or listener with a different experience.
This thesis began by listing some of the various labels attached to Henri in order to
demonstrate the diversity of outlets of the Merseybeat movement. However, whilst
throughout this thesis the idea of the ‘Merseybeat poets’ has been joined by their
manifestations as musicians, artists, and entertainers, what has come to light is that none of
these labels are quite enough. In fact, Henri’s own 1968 label of ‘painter/poet’ (TAN, 77)
makes the two roles simultaneous and does not give higher status to either one. As Catherine
Marcangeli said of Henri, in response to that question of labels:
People ask, ‘Was he mostly a poet or mostly a painter, which one first?’ He felt that
it didn’t matter and you just need to be creative and do stuff. That’s why he was
interested in a lot of different forms of art, because they were forms of the same
thing. The form that that took didn’t really matter, he just did it.28
The Merseybeat movement created poetry both about and for a community, using the live
event as a way of communicating and engaging with that audience, disseminating their
works through a variety of media and artforms. Merseybeat is, as the title of this thesis
states, about performance, poetry, and public.
26
Interview with Catherine Marcangeli, April 2013.
Charles Bernstein, ‘Introduction’, in Close Listening: Poetry and the Performed Word, ed. by
Charles Bernstein (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), pp. 3-26, p. 8.
28
Interview with Catherine Marcangeli, April 2013.
27
221
APPENDIX
CHAPTER ONE FIGURES
Figure 1.1
Liverpool Overhead Railway poster:
From Both Sides of the River: Merseyside in Poetry and Prose, ed. by Gladys Mary Coles
(West Kirby: Headland, 1993), plate 12.
222
1900
1800
Pre-1800
Figure 1.2
Frequently used descriptors from both fiction and non-fiction accounts of Liverpool’s
docklands and city:
Industry
‘How numerous now
her thronging
buildings rise!’,
William Roscoe
‘Mount Pleasant’
(1777), BS, pp. 31
‘it [the pier] was
‘commercial bustle’,
thronged with
‘noisy, bustling scene’,
people’,
J. G. Kohl, Ireland,
Washington Irving,
Scotland and England
The Sketchbook of
(1844), BS, pp. 64 and
Geoffrey Crayon
MM5, pp. 57
(1820), MM1, pp. 22
‘nothing can exceed
‘perpetual bustle’,
the bustle and
Zangara, Slavery
activity’, Herman
Illustrated In the
Melville, Redburn
Histories of Zangara
(1849), pp. 233
and Maquama (1849),
MM5, pp. 90
‘the streets are lined
‘All is bustle,
with handsome
animation, exultation’,
buildings and
Harriet Beecher Stowe,
thronged with
Sunny Memories of
people’, John
Foreign Lands (1854),
Wellborn Root, His
MM1, pp. 10
Life and Work (1896),
MM1, pp. 54
‘picture of the bustle of
a port’ Julius
Rodenburg, An Autumn
in Wales (1856), BS, pp.
85
‘the very busiest bustle
of commerce’,
Nathaniel Hawthorne,
English Notebooks
(1883), p. 14
‘bustling pushing
vulgar men’, Rev.
Francis Kilvert,
Kilvert’s Diary (1944,
of 20 June 1872), BS,
pp. 97
‘life and bustle’, Hugh
Walpole, The Crystal
Box, (1924), BS, pp.
130
‘a bustling maritime
city’, Grevel Lindop,
LA (1996, of c.1955),
pp. 62
Size
‘Such immense docks’,
Johanna Schopenhauer,
A Lady Travels, Journeys in
Scotland and England (trans.
2007, from 1787), MM1, pp.
65
‘dock after dock, like a chain
of immense fortresses’,
Herman Melville, Redburn
(1849), pp. 230
‘the immense buildings’,
Zangara,
Slavery Illustrated In the
Histories of Zangara and
Maquama (1849), MM5, pp.
90
‘docks, quays and immense
warehouses’, Rev. Francis
Kilvert, Kilvert’s Diary
(1944, of 20 June 1872), BS,
pp. 96
‘vast commerce’, Rev.
Francis Kilvert, Kilvert’s
Diary (1944, of 20 June
1872), BS, pp. 96
‘the shops and
warehouses are on a vast
scale; the streets are vast’,
Hyppolite Taine, Notes on
England (1874), MM2,
pp. 60
‘I admired its public
buildings, its vast docks,
its stately shipping’,
Richard Acland
Armstrong, The Deadly
Shame of Liverpool
(1890), MM1, pp. 13
‘immense multitude of ships’,
Nathaniel Hawthorne, English
Notebooks (1883), pp. 13
‘immense reinforced-concrete
struts’ of Met Cathedral,
Grevel Lindop, LA (1996, of
c.1960), pp. 61
‘stale grandeur of those
immense pools’ of Docks,
Grevel Lindop, LA (1996, of
c.1960), pp. 62
‘vast, dirty and noisy’,
Karel Capek, Letters from
England (2001, from
1924), MM1, pp. 25-6
‘The impression of
vastness, strength and
height no words can
describe’, of Anglican
Cathedral, John Betjeman,
Today’s Cathedral
(1978), MM4, pp. 63
‘Everything was immense:
the warehouses, the harbour
board, the shipping lines, the
insurance firms, our two
cathedrals’, Linda Grant, Still
Here (2004), pp. 1
223
Figure 1.3
Photograph of Adrian Henri and Roger McGough, outside a shop using Batman for
advertising:
From The Liverpool Scene, ed. by Edward Lucie-Smith (London: Rapp & Carroll, 1967), p.
24 [detail].
Figure 1.4
Front cover of The Liverpool Scene, with Pop and superhero imagery:
From The Liverpool Scene, ed. by Edward Lucie-Smith (London: Rapp & Carroll, 1967).
224
Figure 1.5
Detail of the 1965 Geographia map of Liverpool, with postcode boundaries marked in red:
From Liverpool Records Office (V Hq 912 1965), 1965 Geographia ‘City of Liverpool
Large Scale Detailed Street Plan’, this section corresponds to Ordnance Survey reference
1:10,000 SJ 38 N.
225
Figure 1.6
Map of Liverpool 8 by John Cornelius:
From John Cornelius, Liverpool 8 (London: John Murray, 1982), inside front cover.
226
Figure 1.7
Detail of the 1965 Geographia map of Liverpool, overlaid with blue markings to show the
area which the poets refer to as ‘Liverpool 8’ (information from poems and other sources),
clearly outside the actual postcode boundary (lines in red):
From Liverpool Records Office (V Hq 912 1965), 1965 Geographia ‘City of Liverpool
Large Scale Detailed Street Plan’, this section corresponds to Ordnance Survey reference
1:10,000 SJ 38 N. Marked area addition by author.
227
Figure 1.8
City dust jacket, designed by Lawrence Edwards with Adrian Henri:
From Adrian Henri, City, (Rapp & Whiting, 1969).
Figure 1.9
Autumn and Winter from Adrian Henri’s Liverpool 8 Four Seasons Painting (1964):
From Adrian Henri Selected and Unpublished Poems 1965-2000, ed. by Catherine
Marcangeli (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2007), p. 89 [detail].
228
Figure 1.10
Handwritten draft of Adrian Henri’s ‘Père Ubu in Liverpool’:
From Adrian Henri Archive, University of Liverpool Special Archives and Collections,
Henri B/5/10.
229
CHAPTER TWO FIGURES
Figure 2.1
Back cover of The Liverpool Scene, with Allen Ginsberg’s famous Liverpool quotation :
From The Liverpool Scene, ed. by Edward Lucie-Smith (London: Rapp & Carroll, 1969).
230
Figure 2.2
Left-hand page of notebook, headed ‘Ginsberg Interview’; Adrian Henri’s list of questions
for a potential interview with Ginsberg:
From Adrian Henri Archive, University of Liverpool Special Archives and Collections,
Henri C 1/7 [double page spread].
231
Figure 2.3
Right-hand page of notebook, headed ‘Alan: Quotes’; quotations from Ginsberg collected by
Henri and other notes on Ginsberg relating to a potential interview
From Adrian Henri Archive, University of Liverpool Special Archives and Collections,
Henri C 1/7 [double page spread].
232
Figure 2.4
Manuscript copy of Ginsberg’s ‘Note Poem’, with handwritten amendments and additions,
given to Patten for possible inclusion in Underdog:
From Brian Patten Archive, University of Liverpool Special Archives and Collections,
Patten I/1/1/3/28.
233
Figure 2.5
Biographical note (typewritten and handwritten additions) written by Ginsberg about Brian
Patten:
From Brian Patten Archive, University of Liverpool Special Archives and Collections,
Patten 1/3/1/5/1.
234
CHAPTER THREE FIGURES
Figure 3.1
Script for the 30th anniversary tour, using critic’s comments for comic effect:
From Roger McGough Archive, University of Liverpool Special Archives and Collections,
McGough/7/18 [detail].
235
Figure 3.2
Manuscript copy of ‘The New “Our Times”’ (across two pages), amended by Henri for a
performance in Edinburgh:
From Adrian Henri Archive, University of Liverpool Special Archives and Collections,
Henri AI.i (17).
236
Figure 3.3
Notebook page with a set list for the ‘Blue Angel’, with emotions indicated next to pieces:
From Adrian Henri Archive, University of Liverpool Special Archives and Collections,
Henri C 1/7 [detail].
237
Figure 3.4
‘Proclamation from the New Ministry of Culture’, marked up for performance:
From Brian Patten Archive, University of Liverpool Special Archives and Collections,
Patten/1/1/21/68.
238
Figure 3.5
‘I Studied Telephones Constantly’, first page example of marked-up version for
performance:
From Brian Patten Archive, University of Liverpool Special Archives and Collections,
Patten 5/4.
Figure 3.6
‘Drunk’, first page example of marked-up version for performance:
From Brian Patten Archive, University of Liverpool Special Archives and Collections,
Patten 5/4.
239
Figure 3.7
Transcript of ‘Cosy Biscuit’ performance (from the ‘Gifted Wreckage / Proposed Format’
Audio Cassette), marked to show line distribution:
McGough Patten Henri
What I wouldn’t give for a nine to five
Biscuits in the right hand drawer,
teabreaks, and typists to mentally undress.
The same faces. Somewhere to hang
your hat and shake your umbrella.
Cosy. Everything in its place.
Upgraded every few years. Hobbies
Glass of beer at lunchtime
Pension to look forward to.
Two kids. Homeloving wife.
Bit on the side when the occasion arises
H.P. Nothing fancy. Neat semi.
[pause, audience laughter]
What I wouldn’t give for a nine to five.
Glass of beer in the right hand drawer
H.P. on everything at lunchtime
The same 2 kids. Somewhere to hang
your wife and shake your bit on the side.
Teabreaks and a pension to mentally undress
The same semifaces upgraded.
Hobbies every few years, neat typists
in wet macs when the umbrella arises.
Ah, what I wouldn’t give for a cosy biscuit.
From Roger McGough Archive, University of Liverpool Special Archives and Collections,
McGough/13/1/1/149 [recording, my transcript].
240
CHAPTER FOUR FIGURES
Figure 4.1a
Notebook page with lists of names for inclusion in ‘Me’:
From the Adrian Henri Archive, Liverpool University Special Collections, C1/8 [detail].
241
Figure 4.1b
Notebook pages showing workings-out for ‘Me’:
From the Adrian Henri Archive, Liverpool University Special Collections, C1/8 [detail].
Figure 4.2
Invitation to events at the Everyman:
From the Adrian Henri Archive, Liverpool University Special Collections, Henri I.1.i.
242
Figure 4.3
Photograph of Adrian Henri by Mike McCartney, partly captioned ‘this is Ade, plus Marvel
comic’:
The comic is Mystery in Space, actually published by DC. The title ran in the US from 1951
to 1966, whereas the UK reprint license only ran to the early issues – L Miller and Son ran
nine issues between 1952-54. The UK company Thorpe & Porter reprinted thirteen doublesize issues of a comic with the same title between 1954-56, combining the original American
comic strips with other stories. The photograph itself can only have been taken after
McCartney met Henri, which was not until 1962, performing at the Merseyside Arts
Festival, but it serves to show the importance of comic books in Henri’s personal life, no
matter at which point or which publication is being used.
From Mike McCartney, Mike McCartney’s Liverpool Life: Sixties Black and Whites
(Birkenhead: Garlic Press, 2003), p. 70-1.
243
CHAPTER FIVE FIGURES
Figure 5.1
Example of a notebook draft, showing what would become number four of ‘Liverpool
Poems’:
From Adrian Henri Archive, University of Liverpool Special Archives and Collections,
Henri C 1/4 [double page spread].
Figure 5.2
Front cover of Underdog 4, with ‘Death of a Bird in the City’:
From Brian Patten Archive, University of Liverpool Special Archives and Collections,
Patten/6/1/1/3.
244
Figure 5.3
Adrian Henri, Death of a Bird in the City (1961), oil on board (122 x 92.5 cm):
From Adrian Henri: Paintings 1953-1998, ed. by Frank Milner (Liverpool: Bluecoat Press,
2000), p. 43.
Figure 5.4
Adrian Henri, Night Door (Homage to Djuna Barnes) (1964-5), mixed media on door (190.5
x 91.5 cm):
From Adrian Henri: Paintings 1953-1998, ed. by Frank Milner (Liverpool: Bluecoat Press,
2000), p. 45.
245
Figure 5.5
Notebook page, ‘Ideas for painting: 8.iv.61’, relating to ‘Death of a Bird in the City’ series:
From Adrian Henri Archive, University of Liverpool Special Archives and Collections,
Henri C 1/4 [detail].
246
Figure 5.6
Adrian Henri, The Entry of Christ Into Liverpool in 1964 (1962-62), oil on hessian (183 x
243.8 cm):
From Adrian Henri: Paintings 1953-1998, ed. by Frank Milner (Liverpool: Bluecoat Press,
2000), p. 59.
Figure 5.7
James Ensor, The Entry of Christ into Brussels in 1889 (1888), oil on canvas (252.5 cm
x 430.5 cm):
From Patricia G. Berman, James Ensor: Christ’s Entry into Brussels in 1889 (Los Angeles:
Getty Publications, 2002), p. vi.
247
Figure 5.8a
Detail from ‘The Entry of Christ into Liverpool’ poster-poem:
From the exhibition catalogue Adrian Henri: painter/poet (London: Fanfare Press, 1968)
[detail].
Figure 5.8b
Detail from ‘The Entry of Christ into Liverpool’ poster-poem:
From the exhibition catalogue Adrian Henri: painter/poet (London: Fanfare Press, 1968)
[detail].
Figure 5.8c
Detail from ‘The Entry of Christ into Liverpool’ poster-poem:
From the exhibition catalogue Adrian Henri: painter/poet (London: Fanfare Press, 1968)
[detail].
248
Figure 5.9
Adrian Henri’s notebook record of the ‘Guinness is good for you’ sign:
From Adrian Henri Archive, University of Liverpool Special Archives and Collections,
Henri C 1/3 [double page spread].
Figure 5.10
Brian Patten’s notebook record of the ‘Guinness is good for you’ sign:
From Brian Patten Archive, University of Liverpool Special Archives and Collections,
Patten/2/1 [detail].
249
Figure 5.11
Second page of manuscript ‘Notes on cities’, showing various lists for ‘Entry’:
From Adrian Henri Archive, University of Liverpool Special Archives and Collections,
Henri A VIII.2 (4).
250
Figure 5.12
Manuscript notes or aides memoires for Autobiography, headed ‘1962-64’:
From Adrian Henri Archive, University of Liverpool Special Archives and Collections,
Henri VI.I (23) [detail].
251
Figure 5.13a
Early draft of Part Four of City, showing ‘on the mantelpiece’ section:
From Adrian Henri Archive, University of Liverpool Special Archives and Collections,
Henri A.III.30 [detail].
252
Figure 5.13b
Later draft of Part Four of City, showing ‘on the mantelpiece’ section:
From Adrian Henri Archive, University of Liverpool Special Archives and Collections,
Henri A.III.17 [detail].
253
Figure 5.14
James Ensor, Alive and Radiant: The Entry of Christ into Jerusalem (1885-6), crayon on
paper (206 x 150.3 cm):
From Patricia G. Berman, James Ensor: Christ’s Entry into Brussels in 1889 (Los Angeles:
Getty Publications, 2002), p. 76.
Figure 5.15a
Roger McGough’s handwritten amendment to the text of ‘40-Love’ (on a photocopy of the
poem in After the Merrymaking), for inclusion in the second edition of The Mersey Sound:
From Penguin Archive at Bristol University, DM 1107 / D 103.
254
Figure 5.15b
Roger McGough’s ‘40-Love’ as published in The Mersey Sound, showing the above desire
has been taken into account:
From Adrian Henri, Roger McGough, and Brian Patten, Penguin Modern Poets 10: The
Mersey Sound Revised and Enlarged Edition (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1974), p. 70-1
[double page spread].
Figure 5.15c
Photograph of Roger McGough’s ‘40-Love’ at the Liverpool Doors exhibition:
Photograph by author. Liverpool Doors ran 24 February – 21 June 2013 at the Museum of
Liverpool.
See
http://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/mol/exhibitions/liverpool-doors/
[accessed 1 March 2013].
255
Figure 5.16a
Earliest known draft of ‘Adrian Henri’s Talking After Christmas Blues’, showing the look
on the page as integral to the composition:
From Adrian Henri Archive, University of Liverpool Special Archives and Collections,
Henri C1/5.
Figure 5.16b
Draft of ‘Adrian Henri’s Talking After Christmas Blues’, showing the look on the page as
integral to the composition:
From Adrian Henri Archive, University of Liverpool Special Archives and Collections,
Henri A.I.1 (57) [detail].
256
Figure 5.17
Printed version of Roger McGough’s ‘Pantomime Poem’, with expressive typography:
From Adrian Henri, Roger McGough, and Brian Patten, Penguin Modern Poets 10: The
Mersey Sound Revised and Enlarged Edition (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1974), p. 63
[detail].
257
Figure 5.18
Notebook draft of ‘Pictures From An Exhibition’:
From Adrian Henri Archive, University of Liverpool Special Archives and Collections,
Henri C 1/6 [double page spread].
Figure 5.19
Robert Rauschenberg, Windward (1963), combine (243 x 178 cm):
From Alice and Peter Smithson, eds., Painting & Sculpture of a Decade 54-64, Tate Gallery
(London: The Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, 1964), p. 47, 228.
258
Figure 5.20
Typewritten copy of ‘Pictures From An Exhibition’, with Adrian Henri’s handwritten
amendments:
From Adrian Henri Archive, University of Liverpool Special Archives and Collections,
Henri A I.1 (76).
Figure 5.21
Mark Rothko, Reds – No 22 (1957), oil on canvas (203 x 176 cm):
From Alice and Peter Smithson, eds., Painting & Sculpture of a Decade 54-64, Tate Gallery
(London: The Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, 1964), p. 17, 100.
259
Figure 5.22a
A list of ‘poems without words’:
From Adrian Henri Archive, University of Liverpool Special Archives and Collections,
Henri A.I.3(6).
Figure 5.22b
A running order of ‘Poems without words for Edinburgh’:
From Adrian Henri Archive, University of Liverpool Special Archives and Collections,
Henri A.I.3(16).
260
Figure 5.23
Cut-up poem, ‘On the Late Late Massachers Stillbirths and Deformed Children a Smoother
Lovelier Skin Job’, as published in Sphinx magazine:
From Brian Patten Archive, University of Liverpool Special Archives and Collections,
Patten/6/1/6.
261
Figure 5.24
Photograph accompanying the Mersey Beat article on ‘Bomb Event’, with original caption:
From ‘The Night The Bomb Dropped’, Mersey Beat, 19 December 1964, p. 10.
Figure 5.25
Page from Adrian Henri’s ‘CD Lecture’, part of ‘Bomb Event’, with actual pamphlet and his
handwritten additions:
From Adrian Henri Archive, University of Liverpool Special Archives and Collections,
Henri 8/2/80.
262
Figure 5.26
Adrian Henri’s handwritten amendment to the text of ‘Commercials for “Bomb Event”’ (on
a photocopy of the poem in Tonight at Noon), changing the title for inclusion in the second
edition of The Mersey Sound:
From Penguin Archive at Bristol University, DM 1107 / D 103.
263
Figure 5.27
Manuscript copy of ‘Commercials for “Bomb Event”’, marked-up for performance by four
voices:
From Adrian Henri Archive, University of Liverpool Special Archives and Collections,
Henri K/1.
264
BIBLIOGRAPHY
PRIMARY TEXTS
Please see also the list of abbreviations at the beginning of this thesis for a list of the primary
works which I have most commonly referred to.
a) Individual Authors
Coles, Gladys Mary, Liverpool Folio (London: Gerald Duckworth & Co., 1984)
Corkish, Alan, 42 Liverpool Poems (Liverpool: erbacce-press, 2008)
Farley, Paul, The Boy from the Chemist is Here to See You (London: Macmillan,
1998)
Garcia Lorca, Federico, Poet in New York, trans. by Greg Simon and Steven F.
White (London: Penguin, 2002)
Ginsberg, Allen, Airplane Dreams: Compositions from Journals (Toronto: The
House of Anansi, 1968)
───── Collected Poems 1947-1985, 2nd. rev. edn. (London: Penguin, 1995)
───── Composed on the Tongue: Literary Conversations, 1967-1977, ed. by
Donald Allen (San Francisco: Grey Fox, 1980)
───── Deliberate Prose: Selected Essays 1952-1995, ed. by Bill Morgan
(Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2000)
Hamilton, Richard, Collected Words 1953-1982 (London: Thames & Hudson, 1982)
Hampson, Robert, Seaport (Exeter: Shearsman Books, 2008)
Henri, Adrian, Adrian Henri: Art of the Sixties (Whitford Fine Art: London, 1997)
───── Adrian Henri: Paintings 1953-1998, ed. by Frank Milner (Liverpool:
Bluecoat Press, 2000)
───── The Art of Adrian Henri 1955-85, ed. by Josie Henderson (London:
Expression Printers, 1986)
───── The Best of Henri: Selected Poems 1960-70 (London: Jonathan Cape,
1975)
───── Collected Poems: 1967-85 (London: Allison & Busby, 1986)
───── From The Loveless Motel: Poems 1976-79 (London: Jonathan Cape, 1980)
───── Wish You Were Here (London: Jonathan Cape, 1980)
Henri, Adrian, Roger McGough, and Brian Patten, New Volume (Harmondsworth:
Penguin, 1983)
Lennon, John, In His Own Write (London: Jonathan Cape, 1964)
───── Spaniard In The Works (London: Jonathan Cape, 1965)
McGough, Roger, After the Merrymaking (London: Jonathan Cape, 1971)
───── As Far As I Know (London: Viking, 2010)
───── Frinck A life in the day of / Summer with Monika (London: Joseph, 1967)
───── Gig (London: Jonathan Cape, 1973)
───── Holiday on Death Row (London: Jonathan Cape, 1979)
265
───── In The Glassroom (London: Jonathan Cape, 1976)
───── Said and Done: the autobiography (London: Random House, 2005)
───── Watchwords (London: Jonathan Cape, 1969)
O’Hara, Frank, The Collected Poems of Frank O’Hara, ed. by Donald Allen
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995)
Patten, Brian, ‘Extracts from Memoir’, The Reader, 46 (2012), 19-24
───── Gargling with Jelly (London: Viking Kestrel, 1985)
───── Grave Gossip (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1979)
───── The Irrelevant Song (London: Allen & Unwin, 1971)
───── Little Johnny’s Confession (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1967)
───── Love Poems (London: Paladin, 1991)
───── Notes to the Hurrying Man (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1969)
Simpson, Matt, Making Arrangements (Newcastle: Bloodaxe, 1982)
Tafari, Levi, Liverpool Experience (West Germany: Michael Schwinn, 1989)
b) Anthologies
Alvarez, A., ed., The New Poetry (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1962)
Coles, Gladys Mary, ed., Both Sides of the River: Merseyside in Poetry and Prose
(West Kirby: Headland, 1993)
Corkish, Alan, ed., Liverpool Poets 08 an anthology (Liverpool: erbacce-press,
2008)
Enright, D. J., ed., The Oxford Book of Contemporary Verse, 1945-1980 (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1980)
Hollo, Anselm, ed., Jazz Poets (London: Vista Books [Pocket Poets Edition], 1963)
Horovitz, Michael, ed., Children of Albion: the poetry of the Underground in Britain
(Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1969)
Lucie-Smith, Edward, ed., British Poetry since 1945 (Harmondsworth: Penguin,
1970)
Morrison, Blake, and Andrew Motion, eds., The Penguin Book of Contemporary
British Poetry (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1982)
Mulhearn, Deborah, ed., Mersey Minis volume 1 Landing (Liverpool: Capsica,
2007)
───── Mersey Minis volume 2 Living (Liverpool: Capsica, 2007)
───── Mersey Minis volume 3 Longing (Liverpool: Capsica, 2007)
───── Mersey Minis volume 4 Loving (Liverpool: Capsica, 2007)
───── Mersey Minis volume 5 Leaving (Liverpool: Capsica, 2007)
Rees, Eleanor, ed., The book of Liverpool: a city in short fiction (Manchester:
Comma, 2008)
Robinson, Peter, ed., Liverpool Accents: Seven Poets and a City (Liverpool:
Liverpool University Press, 1996)
266
SECONDARY SOURCES
Abercrombie, Nicholas, and Brian Longhurst, Audiences: A Sociological Theory of
Performance and Imagination (London: SAGE Publications, 1998)
Adamowicz, Elza, Surrealist Collage in Text and Image (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1998)
Ades, Dawn, ed., Dada and Surrealism Reviewed (London: Arts Council of Great
Britain, 1978)
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Alvarez, A., Beyond All This Fiddle: Essays 1955-1967 (London: Penguin, 1968)
Anderson, Michael, ‘The visual arts and “Howl”’, in Howl for Now: A celebration
of Allen Ginsberg’s epic protest poem, ed. by Simon Warner (Pontefract:
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Anderson, Roy, White Star (Prescot: T Stephenson & Sons, 1964)
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Apollinaire, Guillaume, The Cubist Painters, trans. by Peter Read (Berkeley:
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Auslander, Philip, Liveness: Performance in a Mediatized Culture (London:
Routledge, 1999)
Auslander, Philip, ed., Performance: Critical Concepts in Literary and Cultural
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Austin, J. L., How to do things with words (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1962)
Ayers, Robert, and David Butler, eds., Live Art (Sunderland: AN Publications, 1991)
Bachelard, Gaston, The Poetics of Space, rev. edn., trans. by Maria Joles (Boston:
Beacon Press, 1994)
Bailey, Peter, ‘Champagne Charlie: Performance and Ideology in the Music-Hall
Swell Song’, in Music Hall: Performance and Style, ed. by J. Bratton
(Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 1986), pp. 49-69
───── ‘Making Sense of Music Hall’, in Music Hall: The Business of Pleasure,
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───── ‘Music-Hall and the Knowingness of Popular Culture’, Past & Present,
144 (1994), pp. 138-70
267
Bailey, Peter, ed., Music Hall: The Business of Pleasure (Milton Keynes: Open
University Press, 1986)
Balakian, Anna, Surrealism: The Road to the Absolute (London: George Allen &
Unwin, 1972)
Balshaw, Maria, and Liam Kennedy, eds., Urban Space and Representation
(London: Pluto Press, 2000)
Barry, Peter, Contemporary British Poetry and the City (Manchester: Manchester
University Press, 2000)
───── ‘“The Hard Lyric”: Re-Registering Liverpool Poetry’, in Gladsongs and
Gatherings: poetry and its social context in Liverpool since the 1960s, ed.
by Stephen Wade (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2001), pp. 19-41
Barry, Peter, and Robert Hampson, eds., New British Poetries: The scope of the
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MULTIMEDIA SOURCES
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Richard Carrington (Penguin Audiobooks, 0140865357, 1997)
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ZSW 607, 1977)
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INTERVIEWS CONDUCTED
Interview with Andy Roberts, 16th April 2012
Interview with Andy Roberts, 10th June 2012
Interview with Brian Patten, 3rd April 2012
Interview with Brian Patten, 9th June 2012
Interview with Catherine Marcangeli, 7th May 2012
Interview with Catherine Marcangeli, 27th April 2013
Interview with Geoff Ward, 11th February 2013
Interview with Heather Holden, 8th November 2012
Interview with Mike Evans, 19th June 2013
Interview with Mike McCartney, 12th May 2013
Interview with Roger McGough, 20th November 2012
Interviews with Liverpool Philosophy in Pubs Members (Arthur Adlen, Kevin
Male), 13th January 2011
Interviews with Liverpool Community Members (Arthur Adlen, Janet Bennett,
Sheila McGowan, Teresa Williamson), 27th March 2013
ARCHIVES CONSULTED
The Papers of Adrian Henri: Part One, University of Liverpool Special Collections
& Archives, Liverpool
The Papers of Adrian Henri: Part Two, University of Liverpool Special Collections
& Archives, Liverpool
The Roger McGough Collection, University of Liverpool Special Collections &
Archives, Liverpool
The Brian Patten Collection, University of Liverpool Special Collections &
Archives, Liverpool
The Penguin Archive Project (files DM 1107/ D 103), Bristol University, Bristol
Cuttings files for Adrian Henri, Roger McGough, and Brian Patten at The Saison
Poetry Library, Southbank Centre, London
290